If kids miss a slow-moving ball, don’t write them off as non-sporty - it’s probably because their brains haven’t yet developed the ability to track slow objects, new research suggests.

A group of Canadian researchers found that five-year-olds were less able to detect subtle differences in the speed of moving objects when the objects were moving slowly than when they moved more quickly.

In other words, children’s brains are not very good at seeing speed when objects are moving slowly, said study author Dr. Terri L. Lewis of McMaster University in Ontario.

Consequently, they may often struggle to hit or catch slow-moving balls, or have trouble seeing how fast a car is moving towards them when preparing to cross a street, she said.

“If they’re bad at judging speed, they’re bad at judging speed in various situations,” said Lewis, who also holds a position at the University of Toronto. As a result, parents should not let little children cross the street by themselves, she said.

And if kids are having trouble catching or hitting slow balls, a faster ball may be the answer, Lewis added. “Try speeding it up to see if it helps,” she said.

During the study, Lewis and her colleagues asked 48 five-year olds and 48 adults to look at images of boxes with moving stripes. The participants looked at two boxes, then indicated in which box the stripes were moving faster. In some instances, the stripes in each set of two boxes moved quickly, and in others, the stripes moved slowly.

The investigators found that when children saw two boxes with stripes that moved slowly, it was harder for them to figure out which set of stripes was moving faster. When the children saw two boxes with stripes that moved relatively quickly, it was easier for them to discriminate which set of stripes was moving faster.

These findings suggest that it’s easier for kids to detect changes in speed when an object is moving quickly than when it is moving slowly, the researchers note in the journal Vision Research.

Interestingly, adults were better than children at detecting changes in speed, both when the stripes were moving slowly and when they were moving quickly.

Children’s brains are not as good, “functionally,” as adults’ brains, Lewis noted. However, even in adults, the vast majority of the brain cells charged with sensing speed are “tuned” to moderate speeds, she said, and “very few” are dedicated to judging very slow or very fast speeds.

So, like children, adults also struggled to see changes in speed when objects were moving slowly, faring better when the boxes contained stripes that moved more quickly, Lewis added. “Even adults are worse at slow speeds than they are at faster speeds,” she noted.

SOURCE: Vision Research, July 2005.