Comments on: Catching fly balls: taking a step forward

By: Encephalon 68: A carnival of neuroscience « Ouroboros

Encephalon 68: A carnival of neuroscience « Ouroboros — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:46:39 +0000

[...] implicit strategies for catching that fly ball. Never one to take the easy road, Daniel Lende of Neuroanthropology ponders why novice players tend to take a step forward as soon as they realize a ball has been hit [...]

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 02:28:55 +0000

The latest Four Stone Hearth Blog Carnival, which includes this post, is HERE. Please check it out.

By: The Four Stone Hearth Anthropology Blog Carnival | Quiche Moraine

The Four Stone Hearth Anthropology Blog Carnival | Quiche Moraine — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 23:29:32 +0000

[...] So which is it? Read this post at Neuroanthropology to find out: Catching fly balls: taking a step forward. [...]

By: Athletic Alley Blog Carnival - April 8, 2009 | Athletic Alley

Athletic Alley Blog Carnival - April 8, 2009 | Athletic Alley — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:11:24 +0000

[...] Downey presents Catching fly balls: taking a step forward posted at [...]

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 04:32:55 +0000

Hi Greg!
Wow, thanks for all of the very kind words about the LiveScience article and my home blog! I really appreciate your support.
You make a great point about that dangerous first step. Dr. Kistemaker was kind enough to answer my questions and you see some of his quotes in the article. Of course, space limitations didn’t allow me to expand his whole thought on that first step, but here is the rest of his quote on that topic, “Due to the same geometric relationship, a ball that will land in front of the catcher causes a lower magnitude of optical acceleration than a ball that will land equally far behind the catcher. Therefore, when optical acceleration is below the detection threshold and the ball is far away, the chance that the ball will land in front of the catcher is greater than landing behind.”
The debate between Information Processing and Ecological Processing is also interesting. I’m torn between the two especially when EP seems logical in this case, but then you add in the other factors that experienced fielders use, like who is the hitter, what are there tendencies, what pitch might be thrown and what would that do to the batter, etc. and it argues for a “past lessons learned” approach and IP.
LiveScience has been nice enough to give me a weekly column and you may like this week’s article (Thursday) on a study that showed expert golfers have increased grey matter over inexperienced golfers. What do these additional neuron cells store? Another argument for IP? The debate continues…
Thanks again,
Dan