Jessica K. Witt and Dennis R. Proffitt wrote “See the Ball, Hit the Ball” to explain the correlation between apparent size and athletic accuracy. In various sports, athletes have reported that a ball or target is perceived as being larger when they are performing well, and smaller when they are not. Witt and Proffitt designed a study which would prove that this phenomenon is a product of psychological interpretation. The correlation was measured by comparing size perception to the number of successful hits. Although I’ve never been heavily involved with ball-oriented athletics, I have been a member of an archery team for years. I have noticed that this same phenomenon can occur with stationary targets, as well as moving targets. If I shot arrows…show more content… Dr. Singer explained that skilled actions are divided into two physiological pathways. The ventral pathway leads to the temporal lobe, and is called the “what stream” because it is responsible for processing object identity. The dorsal pathway leads to the parietal lobe, and is called the “where stream” because it helps humans locate and manipulate objects. Perception is crucial for the survival and success of humanity, because we use organization in the nervous system to create a mental representation of the environment. This occurrence is considered a phenomenon because it does not abide by Emmert’s law of Size Constancy. In the course textbook, Emmert’s law was characterized by the constant size of a retinal afterimage, the change in perceived size relative to distance, and a scale which measures the relative change between distance and size. Athlete’s often experience perceptual information which does not abide by the expectations for Emmert’s law. The study by Witt and Proffitt attempted to record the perceptual interpretations of softball players, which do not often follow the expectations of established laws and scales for size and
