Catching action: visuomotor adaptations in children.

Videotapes of the catching action of 28 children aged 4 to 10 years were carefully observed from simultaneous frontal and lateral perspectives. For both one- and two-handed ball catching, three discernible modes of visual attention and limb movement spaced along a maturity continuum were determined. Only for the ten-year-olds catching two-handed did strategies of visual attention (predicting where the ball would be) and limb usage (grasping with the fingers) couple exclusively as in skilled, adult catching. Success in two-handed catching improved exponentially with age from 77% to 96%. For one-handed catching the success rate was 40% at ages 4, 5, and 6 years, 7.5 and 30% at 7 and 8 years, improving steadily to 92% at 10 years. In the middle of age range the drop in performance coincided with the highest incidence of mixed strategies. No gender differences on either strategy or performance were evident.