Baseball's Sight-Audition Farness Effect (SAFE) When Umpiring Baserunners: Judging Precedence of Competing Visual Versus Auditory Events

• Published in: Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance 2019-01, Vol.45 (1), p.67-81
• Main Authors: Krynen, R. Chandler, McBeath, Michael K.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acoustics; Auditory Stimulation; Baseball; Bias; Catching; Distance Perception; Distant; Experiences (Events); Experimental psychology; Feet; Female; Human; Intersensory Processes; Judgment; Male; Motion pictures; Observers; Sensory integration; Sensory perception; Temporal variations; Test Construction; Velocity; Visual Stimulation; Visual stimuli
• ISSN: 0096-1523; 1939-1277
• DOI: 10.1037/xhp0000588

Baseball umpires judge force-outs at first-base by comparing the sound of ball-mitt contact to the sight of foot-base contact. This study examines if distant observer judgments of the temporal order of visual versus auditory events are biased due to the slow speed of sound, or if judgments made from farther away systematically compensate for acoustic delays of sound. Seventy and 81 participants observed videos projected onto a gymnasium wall from 0, 100, or 200 feet, and made multisensory precedence judgments regarding which cue occurred first, visual ("safe") or auditory ("out"). Experiment 1 used visual flash versus auditory click; Experiment 2, colliding visual stimuli versus auditory click; Experiment 3, films of base-runners with basemen catching balls. Our findings confirm a sight-audition farness effect (SAFE) bias such that when visual information is impoverished, distant observers making multisensory precedence judgments typically do not fully compensate for acoustic delays due to the slow speed of sound, which can lead to disagreements. In short, distant fans will tend to have more of a bias to experience baserunners as safe, compared with nearby umpires. Public Significance Statement This research finds that observers do not fully account for the delay in sound over distance when comparing the precedence of visual and auditory stimuli. This subsequently can alter judgments of real world phenomena such as whether a baseball runner is safe or out, with distant fans being more likely than nearby umpires to call the runner safe.