Abstract
Successful performance in baseball batting requires precise spatiotemporal coordination of the bat swing. However, how to practice the timing component of this task remains inconclusive. This study examined whether the timing performance was equivalent between two conditions that differed in the action fidelity of the batting task. Thirty highly trained male baseball batters aged 15 to 20 (M = 17, SD = 0.99), with an average of 11 years (SD = 2.53) of baseball experience, participated in a timing task (Synchrony, Senaptec Inc., USA) with two motor response conditions, button press and baseball swing to a t-ball, each consisting of 10 trials. Between-condition comparison revealed that participants responded significantly earlier and with lower error in the button condition compared to the batting condition (p < 0.001; M = -30.3 ms, SD = 25.2 and M = 61.3 ms, SD = 44.5, respectively). Importantly, there was no significant correlation between the button and batting conditions (Rs = 0.19, p = 0.303). The difference between the two conditions can be attributed to the complexity of the motor response, with the batting condition requiring more time to complete. The extent of this difference varied among participants, which led to the lack of correlation between conditions. We propose that individual differences in bat speed account for this variation. These results suggest that tasks with low action fidelity benefit performance but might adversely impact learning by excluding crucial aspects of a batting task. Further studies should correlate performance in each condition with batting performance.
