Examining Neural Activity Related to Pitch Stimuli and Feedback at the Plate: Cognitive and Performance Implications

Abstract

This study investigated the relationships among neural activity related to pitch stimuli and task feedback, self-regulatory control, and task-performance measures in expert and novice baseball players. The participants had their event-related brain potentials recorded while they completed a computerized task assessing whether thrown pitches were balls or strikes and received feedback on the accuracy of their responses following each pitch. The results indicated that college players exhibited significantly larger medial frontal negativities to pitch stimuli, as well as smaller reward positivities and larger frontocentral positivities in response to negative feedback, compared with novices. Furthermore, significant relationships were present between college players’ neural activity related to both pitches and feedback and their task performance and self-regulatory behavior. These relationships were not present for novices. These findings suggest that players efficiently associate the information received in their feedback to their self-regulatory processing of the task and, ultimately, their task performance.