Sitting on a fastball.

This is the first study to show that when baseball batters fail to hit change-ups it is because they sit on a fastball. Sitting on a fastball refers to a strategy of baseball batters to always expect a fastball (a fast type of pitch), because expecting slower balls would result in too late movement initiation for unexpected fastballs. Here the authors analyzed movement patterns of highly talented baseball batters facing randomly presented fastballs and change-ups (a slower type of pitch). Results revealed that when batters failed to a hit change-up, this was due to too fast movement initiation patterns that were highly similar to those typically associated with fastballs. More specifically, the movement initiation pattern was not adjusted to the slower speeds of change-ups, resulting in a miss. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first behavioral experiment showing that the strategy of sitting on a fastball exists, and how it affects batting performance on change-ups.

Reality-based practice under pressure improves handgun shooting performance of police officers.

The current study examined whether reality-based practice under pressure may help in preventing degradation of handgun shooting performance under pressure for police officers. Using a pre-post-test design, one group of nine police officers practised handgun shooting under pressure evoked by an opponent who also fired back using marking (coloured soap) cartridges. The control group (n = 8) practised handgun shooting on standard cardboard targets instead of real opponents. Within a fortnight after the pre-test, both groups received three training sessions of 1 h, in which each person fired a total of 72 rounds. During the pre- and post test each participant took 30 shots without pressure (cardboard targets) and 30 shots under additional pressure (with an opponent firing back). While during the pre-test both groups performed worse in front of an opponent firing back compared to the cardboard targets, after the training sessions shooting performance of the experimental group no longer deteriorated with an opponent while performance of the control group was equally harmed as during the pre-test. These results indicate that training exercises involving increased pressure can acclimatize shooting performance of ordinary police officers to those situations with elevated pressure that they may encounter during their police work.

Basketball jump shooting is controlled online by vision.

An experiment was conducted to examine whether basketball jump shooting relies on online visual (i.e., dorsal stream-mediated) control rather than motor preprogramming. Seventeen expert basketball players (eight males and nine females) performed jump shots under normal vision and in three conditions in which movement initiation was delayed by zero, one, or two seconds relative to viewing the basket. Shots were evaluated in terms of both outcome and execution measures. Even though most shots still landed near the basket in the absence of vision, end-point accuracy was significantly better under normal visual conditions than under the delay conditions, where players tended to undershoot the basket. In addition, an overall decrease of inter-joint coordination strength and stability was found as a function of visual condition. Although these results do not exclude a role of motor preprogramming, they demonstrate that visual sensory information plays an important role in the continuous guidance of the basketball jump shot.