Measuring how slugger Albert Pujols keeps his eye on the ball

Professor Richard Abrams studies perception, attention, and motor control in his Attention and Performance Lab, focusing on the mental mechanisms of eye and limb movement, and covert movements of visual attention.

What’s that look like, you ask? It might look like letters forming from objects, or shapes suddenly starting to move in a scene, or even a baseball coming at a batter at 90 miles per hour.

In a typical experiment, explains Professor Abrams, a subject might view a video display and point to or look at objects on the display, while the positions of their eye and hand are recorded.

One ongoing project on which Professor Abrams has been working examines the role of objects in attention and action. For example, when a new object appears in your field of vision, or when an old object begins to move, your attention is automatically drawn to it. Not only do you see it right away – but you can point to it or reach for it quickly, too. It comes down to how we make sense of the world we live in, Professor Abrams explains.

Throughout evolution, it has been important to know what was around us, so we could react appropriately to it, he adds. We had to know if something was alive – was it an animal about to attack you or a harmless leaf fluttering in the wind? Our survival depended on how quickly you saw it, processed it psychologically, and then reacted to it.

In today’s world, our survival might not depend so heavily on how rapidly we assess the objects around us, but if you’re St. Louis Cardinal slugger Albert Pujols, perception and performance are tightly interwoven. Recently, Professor Abrams and others from the Department of Psychology in Arts & Sciences and the Medical School’s Department of Neurology, and its programs of Physical and Occupational therapies were asked to put Pujols through a series of tests similar to those performed on New York Yankees legend Babe Ruth in 1921.

Professor Abrams’ test focused on Pujols’ ability to move his eyes in response to visual stimuli, using a specialized video camera and an infrared light source. The device tracked the exact location of his line of sight and how long it took him to move his eyes from one location to another. The test measured the speed of orienting the eye to visual targets, and also the ability to inhibit the natural response to a stimulus. Pujols scored well above average on those tests. In one series, his time was 18 milliseconds faster than average. That may not sound like much, but when you’re in the batter’s box, it translates into an additional two feet the ball travels from the pitcher’s mound, which might turn into quite an advantage.

What is it about the Department of Psychology that captures students’ attention? The department is research oriented, Professor Abrams explains, with a lot of opportunities not just for graduate students, but undergrads as well.

Almost every Psychology lab has undergraduates playing important roles in research, doing everything from preparing the stimuli to co-authoring papers.

All students are encouraged to develop an understanding of the logic and techniques of psychological research, whether it’s through working in a lab, presenting an honors project, or enrolling in the department’s Experimental Psychology course.

In the course, Professor Abrams explains, each student works under the close supervision of a faculty member to create and complete an independent research project of their own design. These opportunities are just not found everywhere, he adds. Perhaps that’s one more reason the opportunities in the Department of Psychology in Arts & Sciences are capturing the attention of students and experts alike.