The study found that people who are blindfolded employ the same strategy to intercept a running ball carrier as people who can see<\/strong>, which suggests that multiple areas of the brain cooperate to accomplish the task.<\/p>\n Regardless of whether they could see or not, the study participants seemed to aim ahead of the ball carrier\u2019s trajectory and then run to the spot where they expected him or her to be in the near future<\/strong>. Researchers call this a \u201cconstant target-heading angle\u201d strategy, similar to strategies used by dogs catching Frisbees and baseball players catching fly balls.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also the best way to catch an object that is trying to evade capture, explained Dennis Shaffer, assistant professor of psychology at The Ohio State University at Mansfield.<\/p>\n \u201cThe constant-angle strategy geometrically guarantees that you\u2019ll reach your target, if your speed and the target\u2019s speed stay constant, and you\u2019re both moving in a straight line. It also gives you leeway to adjust if the target abruptly changes direction to evade you,\u201d Shaffer said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that people run after targets at a constant angle regardless of whether they can see or not suggests that there are brain mechanisms in place that we would call \u2018polymodal\u2019<\/strong>\u2014areas of the brain that serve more than one form of sensory modality. Sight and hearing may be different senses, but within the brain the results of the sensory input for this task may be the same.\u201d<\/p>\n The study appears in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review<\/em>.<\/p>\n Nine people participated in the study<\/strong>\u2014mainly students at Ohio State and Arizona State University, where the study took place. Some had experience playing football, either at a high school or collegiate intramural level, while others had limited or no experience with football.<\/p>\n The nine of them donned motion-capture equipment and took turns in pairs, one running a football across a 20-meter field (nearly 22 yards), and one chasing. They randomly assigned participants to sighted and blindfolded conditions. In the blindfolded condition, participants wore a sleep mask and the runner carried a foam football with a beeping device inside, so that the chaser had a chance to locate them by sound<\/strong>. The runners ran in the general direction of the chasers at different angles, and sometimes the runner would cut right or left halfway through the run.<\/p>\n The study was designed so that the pursuer wouldn\u2019t have time to consciously think about how to catch the runner.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were just focused on trying to touch the runner as soon as possible and before they exited the field,\u201d Shaffer said. \u201cThe idea was to have the strategy emerge by instinct.\u201d<\/p>\n About 97 percent of the time, the person doing the chasing used the constant-angle strategy\u2014even when they were blindfolded and only able to hear the beeping football<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The results were surprising, even to Shaffer.<\/p>\n \u201cI knew that this seemed to be a universal strategy across species, but I expected that people\u2019s strategies would vary more when they were blindfolded, just because we aren\u2019t used to running around blindfolded. I didn\u2019t expect that the blindfolded strategies would so closely match the sighted ones.\u201d<\/p>\n The findings suggest that there\u2019s some common area in the brain that processes sight and sound together when we\u2019re chasing something<\/strong>.<\/p>\n There is another strategy for catching moving targets. Researchers call it the pursuit or aiming strategy, because it involves speeding directly at the target\u2019s current location. It\u2019s how apex predators such as sharks catch prey.<\/p>\n \u201cAs long as you are much faster than your prey, the pursuit strategy is great. You just overtake them<\/strong>,\u201d Shaffer said.<\/p>\n In a situation where the competition is more equal, the constant-angle strategy works better\u2014the pursuer doesn\u2019t have to be faster than the target, and if the target switches direction, the pursuer has time to adjust<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The study builds on Shaffer\u2019s previous work with how collegiate-level football players chase ball carriers. He\u2019s also studied how people catch baseballs and dogs catch Frisbees. All appear to use strategies similar to the constant target-heading angle strategy, which suggests that a common neural mechanism could be at work<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Coauthors on the paper included Igor Dolgov of New Mexico State University; Eric McManama, Charles Swank, Andrew B. Maynor and Kahlin Kelly of The Ohio State University at Mansfield; and John G. Neuhoff of the College of Wooster. The motion-capture trials took place in the laboratory of Michael McBeath at Arizona State University.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Ohio State University press release via EurekAlert!: A new study has found that chasing down a moving object is not only a matter of sight or of sound,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,324],"tags":[42,12,41],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14390"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14390"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14442,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14390\/revisions\/14442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"tablet](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/tablet-computer-seniors.jpg\")
A new study has found that chasing down a moving object is not only a matter of sight or of sound, but of mind<\/strong>.<\/p>\n