title: Catching a gently thrown ball.
abstract: Several studies have shown that people can catch a ball even if it is visible only during part of its flight. Here, we examine how well they can do so. We measured the movements of a ball and of the hands of both the thrower and the catcher during one-handed underarm throwing and catching. The catcher's sight was occluded for 250 ms at random moments. Participants could catch most balls without fumbling. They only really had difficulties if vision was occluded before the ball was released and was restored less than 200 ms before the catch. In such cases, it was impossible to accurately predict the ball's trajectory from motion of the ball and of the thrower's hand before the occlusion, and there was not enough time to adjust the catching movement after vision was restored. Even at these limits, people caught most balls quite adequately.
authors.affiliation: Department of Basic Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour (IR3C), University of Barcelona, Passeig de la Vall d'Hebron, 171, 08035, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. j.lopezmoliner@ub.edu
authors.forename: Joan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: López-Moliner
authors.forename: Eli
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Brenner
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Louw
authors.forename: Jeroen B J
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Smeets
mesh_terms: D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D006225:Hand / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D016011:Normal Distribution; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors; D013998:Time Perception / Q000502:physiology*