Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2024, Vision Science

The task of predicting the vertical location of an object when it arrives to an observer may be based on a combination of visual ball-flight cues and internal models of projectile motion, incorporating gravity, advance cues, and kinematic cues associated with a thrower's motion. The time required to efficiently process these visual cues to predict the ball's trajectory is unknown. The purpose of this experiment was to determine whether viewing an approaching ball for a longer period of time can improve estimates of the passing height of this ball when only visual cues from ball-flight are provided. A second goal was to determine whether heuristic information predominates over visual cues to object trajectory in estimating the passing height of approaching objects, and whether heuristic information is more likely to be used early in the ball's flight. Twenty subjects (12 males and 8 females, mean age 23.7±1.69) who had played baseball or softball at the high school level or above within the past 10 years participated. Subjects stood 40 feet from a pneumatic pitching machine that propelled tennis balls toward them at 3 speeds (76mph, 61mph, and 52mph). The subjects' vision was blocked with occluding spectacles at 100ms (duration 1) or 250ms (duration 2) after pitch release. Each combination of speed and viewing duration was randomly used 10 times. Subjects then indicated on a 2-meter ruler the height they expected the ball to arrive had they been able to view the entire duration of the ball's trajectory. The balls arrived at heights of about 99cm (fast speed), 59cm (medium speed), and 21cm (slow speed). The mean height responses at the fastest speed were 109cm (duration 1) and 100cm (duration 2). At the medium speed the mean responses were 98cm (duration 1) and 80cm (duration 2). At the slowest speed the mean responses were 88cm (duration 1) and 65cm (duration 2). Paired t-tests between the mean responses for the two viewing durations at each speed all showed s (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Nicklaus Fogt OD, PhD (Advisor); Andrew Toole OD, PhD (Advisor); Jennifer Fogt OD, MS (Committee Member); Teng Leng Ooi PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Optics; Sports Medicine