Color perception is impaired in baseball batters while performing an interceptive action

In order to test the theoretical idea that experts rely more on the dorsal stream than the ventral stream during interceptive action for the interception of a moving target, the present study investigates the perception of color (dominant in ventral processing) during interceptive action in fast-ball sports. Twelve college baseball players and 12 non-baseball players performed a coincident-timing task with target color changes (from white to red, blue, or white) at various time points (at 100, 200, or 300 ms before target arrival). In this task, participants swung a bat and/or pressed a button in response to the target’s arrival at a prespecified location. Participants were then asked to state the final color of the target. Baseball players, but not non-baseball players, were significantly less proficient at identifying color changes during the bat-swing condition relative to the button-press condition, irrespective of the time points of color change. These results are consistent with the idea that baseball players rely more on the dorsal stream during bat swinging for the interception of a moving target than do novices.