Length of Time Necessary to View a Ball While Catching It

Abstract

College women (N=65) attempted to catch a tennis ball rebounding from a wall to which the ball was projected from a pitching machine. Ss were permitted to see the ball at the end of flight for 0.5, 0.4, 0.3, 0.25, or 0.2 sec. There were significant differences among each of the conditions, with increased viewing time yielding increased catching success. The correlation coefficients between a measure of simple reaction time and catching success during these five conditions ranged from .04 to -.68.