Transitions between Central and Peripheral Vision Create Spatial/Temporal Distortions: A Hypothesis Concerning the Perceived Break of the Curveball
Figure 4
Experimental results applied to an actual trajectory of a curveball.
A) The parabola fit to the curveball data tabulated in Bahill and Baldwin [34]. B) The line drawn at each point represents the physical velocity of the curveball at every moment of time. C) The deviation of the moment-by-moment perceived velocity of the ball (indicated by the red lines), assuming that the batter's gaze shifts to the expected point of bat/ball contact when the ball is 20 ft away from home plate (i.e., when the ball is 20 ft from home plate, the batter shifts his/her eyes so that the ball is at 10-degree eccentricity; the eccentricity decreases linearly when the ball reaches home plate). D) We used the perceived moment-by-moment velocity of the ball from part C to estimate the perceived trajectory of the ball, which is dependent on the initial eccentricity and when eye shift occurs. Each line indicates when the batter shifts his/her eyes from the ball toward home plate (i.e., the red line indicates that the observer shifts his/her eyes when the ball is 20 ft away; green line, 15 ft; dark blue line, 10 ft; light blue line, 5 ft). The longer the batter is able to maintain foveal fixation on the ball, the less the ball will be perceived to deviate from its parabolic path.