Chasing down a moving object is not only a matter of sight and sound; but as a new study led by Psychology Professor Dennis Shaffer (Mansfield) says, it is also a matter of mind.

The study, published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, showed that regardless of the participants’ ability to see, they seemed to aim ahead of the ball carrier’s trajectory.

The study subject would then run to the spot where they expected him or her to be in the near future. Shaffer and his team call this a constant target-heading angle strategy. It is similar to strategies that dogs use to catch Frisbees, or that baseball players use to catch fly balls. It’s also the best way to catch an object that is trying to evade capture, according to study results.

“The constant-angle strategy geometrically guarantees that you’ll reach your target, if your speed and the target’s speed stay constant and you’re both moving in a straight line. It also gives you leeway to adjust if the target abruptly changes direction to evade you,” Shaffer said.

“The 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 polymodal—areas 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, suggesting that there’s some common area in the brain that processes sight and sound together when we’re chasing something," said Shaffer.

The primary focus of Shaffer’s research is the study of visual motion perception. Specifically, his investigations attempt to understand the perceptual strategies humans (and in some cases, animals) use to: navigate in their environment, judge the size and the trajectory of motion of objects in their environment, and control anticipatory and attentional eye movements to moving targets. This study builds on Shaffer’s previous work with how collegiate-level football players chase ball carriers.

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.

Read the entire press release, courtesy of Pam Frost Gorder, assistant director, Ohio State Research and Innovation Communication.