Visual Perception and Action in Sport

Resumen: El propósito de este estudio fue analizar y comparar el comportamiento visual de taekwondistas de diferente nivel de pericia (17 expertos, 7 experimentados y 9 novatos) ante una situación de combate simulada en laboratorio. Se empleó el pupilómetro Mobile Eye ASL para registrar la mirada mientras visionaban acciones de ataque grabadas y presentadas a tamaño real. Los resultados mostraron que mientras que los taekwondisde menor duración en zonas corporales como la cabeza o piernas del oponente a medida que aumentaba el nivel de pericia (experimentados y expertos) el comportamiento nes pero de mayor duración en la zona del torso del oponente. Los taekwondistas expertos mostraron una estrategia visual muy diferenciada basada en un pivote visual y una estabilización de la mirada, quite eye, antes de la toma de decisiones. Palabras clave: aprendizaje, percepción, deporte, rendimiento, destreza.

To visually perceive opportunities for action, athletes rely on the movements of their eyes, head and body to explore their surrounding environment. To date, the specific types of technology and their efficacy for assessing the exploration behaviours of association footballers have not been systematically reviewed. This review aimed to synthesise the visual perception and exploration behaviours of footballers according to the task constraints, action requirements of the experimental task, and level of expertise of the athlete, in the context of the technology used to quantify the visual perception and exploration behaviours of footballers. A systematic search for papers that included keywords related to football, technology, and visual perception was conducted. All 38 included articles utilised eye-movement registration technology to quantify visual perception and exploration behaviour. The experimental domain appears to influence the visual perception behaviour of footballers, however no studies investigated exploration behaviours of footballers in open-play situations. Studies rarely utilised representative stimulus presentation or action requirements. To fully understand the visual perception requirements of athletes, it is recommended that future research seek to validate alternate technologies that are capable of investigating the eye, head and body movements associated with the exploration behaviours of footballers during representative open-play situations.

Unravelling correspondences between musical sounds and dance movements can lead to insights into the selection and development of culturally modified sensory, motor and perceptual capacities. Gaining these insights requires the development of holistic methodologies to analyse sound and movement concomitantly. The cultural training of performers and their intersubjective dynamics orient the interactions between sound and movement in any performance genre. As an entry point into considering the intimate entanglement of music and dance, this article opens with an account of the direct correspondences between sound and movement in Afro-Brazilian stick-dancing before analysing the more obscure relationships between sound and movement in West Sumatran plate-dancing. The rhythmic swinging of hand-held plates can be accompanied by tapping sounds created by dancers or by musicians. Differences between the timing of movement-related sounds in self-accompanied and musician-accompanied plate-dancing reveal how humanly organised expression is shaped by the interplay of bodily skill, perceptual processes and cultural experience.

Resumen: El objetivo del presente trabajo es analizar las estrategias de búsqueda visual desarrolladas por un grupo de conductores expertos (n=5) y otro inexperto (n=5) en una situación simulada de conducción en laboratorio. El registro de los movimientos oculares se hace a través del sistema de seguimiento de la mirada ASL SE5000 y se analizan el número, tiempo y localización de las fijaciones visuales. Los conductores observaron una secuencia de fotogramas específicos de conducción, para emitir seguidamente una respuesta verbal tras cada ensayo. Los resultados muestran que el grupo de conductores expertos e inexpertos elaboran diferentes estrategias de búsqueda visual. Estas diferencias se encuentran en un mayor tiempo de fijación del grupo de conductores experto cuando no se tiene en cuenta la localización de la fijación visual. También presenta un mayor número y tiempo de fijación en estímulos relevantes para la conducción (señales verticales y vehículos) con respecto al grupo inexperto. En cambio, este último grupo presenta un número y tiempo de fijaciones superior en localizaciones poco relevantes para la conducción. No existen diferencias entre grupos de conductores en la precisión de sus respuestas verbales, y tampoco una relación entre las variables perceptivas y la precisión de sus respuestas. Palabras clave: Estrategias búsqueda visual; experiencia; conducción.

The aim of this study consists of the application of an experimental protocol that allows information to be obtained about the visual search strategies elaborated by swimming coaches. 16 swimming coaches participated. The Experienced group (n = 8) had 16.1 yr. (SD= 8.2) of coaching experience and at least five years of experience in underwater vision. The Nonexperienced group in underwater vision (n = 8) had 4.2 yr. (SD = 4.0) of coaching experience. Participants were tested in a laboratory environment using a video-projected sample of the crawl stroke of an elite swimmer. This work discusses the main areas of the swimmer's body used by coaches to identify and analyse errors in technique from overhead and underwater perspectives. In front-underwater videos, body roll and mid-water were the locations of the display with higher percentages of fixation time. In the side-underwater slow videos, the upper body was the location with higher percentages of visual fixation time and was used to detect the low elbow fault. Side-overhead takes were not the best perspectives to pick up information directly about performance of the arms; coaches attended to the head as a reference for their visual search. The observation and technical analysis of the hands and arms were facilitated by an underwater perspective. Visual fixation on the elbow served as a reference to identify errors in the upper body. The sideunderwater perspective may be an adequate way to identify correct knee angles in leg kicking and the alignment of a swimmer's body and leg actions.

The study examined effects of spatial stimulus–response compatibility on response time and response accuracy in 20 novice combat sport athletes. Two equivalent groups, based on initial reaction time measures, were required to perceive and move quickly and accurately in response to an unspecific visual stimulus presented on a large screen during two types of perceptual training in eight laboratory sessions. One group reacted by moving the fist towards the stimulus location on the target (direct compatibility condition). Another group was required to move the fist away from target in the opposite direction (indirect compatibility condition). Specifically, the indirect compatibility group achieved faster reaction times than the direct compatibility group during the two post-tests containing video-projected attacks of the opponents, and in one of the two post-tests containing real opponents´ attacks. Results seem to reveal higher combat performance against real opponents when athletes trained with an indirect stimulus-response compatibility condition.

Desde los modelos representacionalistas se ha relacionado la atención visual con la actividad de un sistema supramodal que actúa selectivamente sobre representaciones de alto nivel. Partiendo de los modelos recientes de la percepción-acción, y de las evidencias que resultan congruentes con perspectivas que defienden un estrecho vínculo entre atención y acción, proponemos entender la atención visual cómo intrínseca al procesamiento visomotor. Atención y acción se encuentran indisolublemente ligadas, sin necesidad de una mediación representacional. Empezando por los condicionantes evolutivos de la percepción visual humana, analizamos las interrelaciones entre los mecanismos selectivos y la programación y ejecución motoras, apuntando los inconvenientes de los modelos atencionales formulados desde el cognitivismo simbólico. La naturaleza de la atención visual se entiende mejor desde aproximaciones mínimamente representacionalistas (no representacionalistas en el sentido canónico). Más que un sistema que actúa sobre “mapas espaciales maestros”o “representaciones de objetos”, la atención visual es el producto de las transformaciones y sesgos gananciales que ocurren en los circuitos motores a partir de la compleja interacción del organismo (mente-cuerpo) con el entorno.

Palabras clave: Atención visual, no representacionalismo, mente corporeizada, percepción-acción, Teoría Premotora de la atención, selección para la acción, neuronas canónicas, neuronas espejo, movimientos oculares sacádicos, programación motora, ejecución.

Keywords: Visual attention, Non-representationalism, embodied mind, perception-action, Premotor Theory of Attention, selection-for-action, canonical neurons, mirror neurons, saccadic eye movements, motor programming, motor execution.

Experienced athletes in sports with moving objects have shown greater skill when using visual information to anticipate the direction of a moving object than nonexperienced athletes of those sports. Studies have shown that expert athletes are more effective than novices in occlusion situations in the first stages of the sports sequence. In this study, 12 athletes with different competitive experience in sports with moving objects viewed a sequence of tennis ball launches with and without visual occlusion, launched by a ball-shooting machine toward different areas with respect to the participant's position. The relation among visual behavior, occlusion time, and the precision of the task is reviewed. The spot where the balls bounced was analysed by a digital camera and visual behavior by an Eye Tracking System. Analysis showed that the nonexperienced athletes made significantly more errors and were more variable in visual occlusion conditions. Participants had a stable visual search strategy.