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Special Issue Psychology

Transferability of Multiple Object Tracking Skill Training to Professional Baseball Players’ Hitting Performance

Journal Of Digital Life.2024, 4,5;

Received:December 4, 2023 Revised:February 4, 2024 Accepted:March 5, 2024 Published:April 26, 2024

Creative Commons License

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Ryousuke Furukado
Faculty of Engineering, Integrated System Engineering, Nishinippon Institute of Technology, General Incorporated Association Behavior Assessment Systems Laboratory

Correspondence: furukado@nishitech.ac.jp

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Abstract

This study aimed to determine the effects of multiple object tracking (MOT) skill training on elite baseball players. Baseball demands athletes to exhibit a high level of dynamic movement and quick and accurate situational judgment in multiple situations, including offense, defense, and base running. However, current research has not clarified whether the effects of MOT skills training are transferable to baseball performance. We investigated whether MOT skill training influenced baseball hitting performance before and after the intervention. Twelve players from a Japanese professional baseball team participated, and the intervention spanned approximately five months. The MOT skills of all players significantly improved (n=12). Additionally, we assessed the changes in hitting performance following MOT skill training. The results revealed a significant trend toward an improvement in the zone contact rate, zone swing strike rate, and outside swing strike rate in the breaking ball condition, such as the curveball and slider, indicating a large effect size (n=6). Further research across various competition levels is necessary to explore the transfer effects of MOT training on baseball-specific parameters.

Tracking multiple objects moving in the visual field is called multiple object tracking (MOT). Pylyshyn and Storm (1988) have reported a continuous and dynamic visual attention mechanism using MOT tasks. In the MOT paradigm, a set of visually indistinguishable objects (typically 6-10) is presented on a screen (2D or 3D) with designated target objects to be tracked (usually 3-5). The participants tracked these designated objects for a defined period and identified the tracked objects once they stopped moving. Two methods are commonly used: the mark-all method, in which all the specified tracked objects are identified, and the probe-one method, in which one selected object is identified as a tracked object. The difficulty of the MOT task can be adjusted by varying the number of tracked and disturbed objects and the speed of object movement. In the psychophysical field, ongoing research includes attentional process models, as reviewed by Meyerhoff, Papenmeier, and Huff (2017), pertaining to tracking theory during MOT implementation.

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