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Manalo, Gabriel Noah

University of British Columbia

The pursuit of a competitive advantage in sports has increasingly emphasized the development of perceptual-cognitive skills, which underlie anticipation and decision-making in interceptive sports like baseball. This cross-sectional pilot study aimed to assess the effects of a baseball-specific perceptual-cognitive training video game as an adjunct tool to traditional batting practice. Twenty male youth athletes (ages 13– 17) with at least one year of competitive baseball experience as batting athletes, were quasi-randomly assigned to either an intervention group (n = 10) or a control group (n = 10). All athletes engaged in 90 minutes of a typical batting program on each of seven training days. The intervention group engaged in a batting-specific video game during rest intervals, while the control group received typical rest periods. Player performance was assessed at pre-test, at immediate post-test, and at delayed retention (one week after training). Outcome measures included a 15-pitch live batting scenario, a pitch-type and location anticipation task, and a coincident anticipation timing task. The final analysis included 13 participants (n = 7 control; n = 6 intervention). A significant main effect of Time was observed for coincident anticipation timing (both absolute error, F(1.32, 14.46) = 10.74, p = .003 and constant error, F(1.36, 14.91) = 6.33, p = .017) and for pitch type recognition in the occlusion task, F(2, 22) = 8.09, p = .002. In the live batting task, a significant main effect of Group was found, where the intervention group demonstrated superior decision accuracy, F(1, 11) = 9.54, p = .010, and chase rate performance, F(1, 11) = 6.54, p = .027, compared to the control group at retention. These findings support the integration of a baseball-specific perceptual-cognitive video game as a supplement to traditional baseball practice. From a practical perspective, these findings also show that rest intervals during physical practice can be optimized to develop perceptual-cognitive skills. Future research should explore optimal duration and scheduling of video-based perceptual-cognitive training, assess transferability to real-game performance, examine differences across age and skill levels, and compare outcomes across diverse sport skills and digital technology.

Text

2025-04-25

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/90811

Kinesiology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/