| Sumario: | Background: Different pitch types produce different patterns on a baseball as balls spin toward the batter. Batters have only about 250ms to examine and make use of these patterns in determining pitch trajectory. The purpose of the current study was to measure subjects' ability to determine seam orientation on spinning baseballs with and without temporal constraints. Methods: Two separate studies were performed, with ten subjects in each study. In both studies, subjects were asked to determine one of three possible seam orientations of a spinning baseball. In the first study, subjects viewed baseballs monocularly under two conditions. In one condition, subjects were given unlimited time to determine the seam orientation. In the other condition, subjects were given 286ms to determine the seam orientation. In the second study, subjects viewed baseballs monocularly in one condition and binocularly in the second condition, with unlimited time to determine the seam orientation. Each subject gave 63 responses in all conditions. Results: In Study 1, seam recognition performance was significantly better (p=0.015) with unlimited viewing time (52.06% correct) compared to limited viewing time (37.62% correct). In Study 2, no significant difference (p=0.52) between binocular and monocular viewing (76.03% and 74.29% correct, respectively) was observed. Conclusions: The difference in seam recognition performance for the limited versus unlimited viewing times (28% reduction with limited viewing) was significantly greater than the difference in performance in comparing binocular and monocular viewing.
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