How gender and task difficulty affect a sport-protective response in young adults

Abstract

We tested the hypotheses that gender and task difficulty affect the reaction, movement, and total response times associated with performing a head protective response. Twenty-four healthy young adults (13 females) performed a protective response by raising their hands from waist level to block a foam ball fired at their head from an air cannon. Participants initially stood 8.25 m away from the cannon (‘low difficulty’), and were moved successively closer in 60 cm increments until they failed to block at least five of eight balls (‘high difficulty’). Limb motion was quantified using optoelectronic markers on the participants’ left wrist. Males had significantly faster total response times (P = 0.042), a trend towards faster movement times (P = 0.054), and faster peak wrist velocity (P < 0.001) and acceleration (P = 0.032) than females. Reaction time, movement time, and total response time were significantly faster under high difficulty conditions for both genders (P < 0.001). This study suggests that baseball and softball pitchers and fielders should have sufficient time to protect their head from a batted ball under optimal conditions if they are adequately prepared for the task.

Keywords:

• reaction time
• movement time
• blocking
• baseball
• softball

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the participants who volunteered to take part in this study. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Trina DeMott, PT, for help in screening the participants and with the experiment; Hogene Kim, MS, for help with the experiment; Nick LeCursi, CPO, for making the custom sabot; and Professor Lloyd Smith, PhD, for loaning the light gates to our laboratory. We are grateful for the financial support of a New Investigator Award from the Foundation for Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (JTE), a pilot grant from the University of Michigan Bone and Joint Injury Prevention Center, and a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship (DBL).