The commercial market for technologies to monitor and improve personal health and sports performance is ever expanding. A wide range of smart watches, bands, garments, and patches with embedded sensors, small portable devices and mobile applications now exist to record and provide users with feedback on many different physical performance variables. These variables include cardiorespiratory function, movement patterns, sweat analysis, tissue oxygenation, sleep, emotional state, and changes in cognitive function following concussion. In this review, we have summarized the features and evaluated the characteristics of a cross-section of technologies for health and sports performance according to what the technology is claimed to do, whether it has been validated and is reliable, and if it is suitable for general consumer use. Consumers who are choosing new technology should consider whether it (1) produces desirable (or non-desirable) outcomes, (2) has been developed based on real-world need, and (3) has been tested and proven effective in applied studies in different settings. Among the technologies included in this review, more than half have not been validated through independent research. Only 5% of the technologies have been formally validated. Around 10% of technologies have been developed for and used in research. The value of such technologies for consumer use is debatable, however, because they may require extra time to set up and interpret the data they produce. Looking to the future, the rapidly expanding market of health and sports performance technology has much to offer consumers. To create a competitive advantage, companies producing health and performance technologies should consult with consumers to identify real-world need, and invest in research to prove the effectiveness of their products. To get the best value, consumers should carefully select such products, not only based on their personal needs, but also according to the strength of supporting evidence and effectiveness of the products.

/pdf/a-critical-review-of-consumer-wearables-mobile-applications-1w44datvbc.pdf

A Critical Review of Consumer Wearables, Mobile Applications, and Equipment for Providing Biofeedback, Monitoring Stress, and Sleep in Physically Active Populations.

Athletes need excellent vision to perform well in their sports, and many athletes have turned to vision training programs as a way to augment their traditional training regimen. The growing practic...

Sports vision training: A review of the state-of-the-art in digital training techniques

In a film produced by Johansson, a group of moving spots, corresponding to lights attached to the main joints of a walker or a runner, gives instantly a vivid impression of a person walking or running. Even when this film was inverted and run backward, some sort of human movement was still perceived. It was perceived more frequently as an upright image of a person moving forward in a very strange manner than as an inverted image of a person moving backward. Such strangeness seemed to arise from the fact that the actor's arms were perceived as legs and vice versa. The phase relations typical of the Johansson pattern are therefore still present when the film is inverted and run backward, leading to the perception of biological motions though these motions are very strange.

Upside-down presentation of the Johansson moving light-spot pattern

Evidence suggests that an athlete's sports-related perceptual-cognitive expertise is a crucial element of top-level competitive sports1. When directly assessing whether such experience-related abilities correspond to fundamental and non-specific cognitive laboratory measures such as processing speed and attention, studies have shown moderate effects leading to the conclusion that their special abilities are context-specific2. We trained 308 observers on a complex dynamic visual scene task void of context and motor control requirements3 and demonstrate that professionals as a group dramatically differ from high-level amateur athletes, who dramatically differ from non-athlete university students in their capacity to learn such stimuli. This demonstrates that a distinguishing factor explaining the capacities of professional athletes is their ability to learn how to process complex dynamic visual scenes. This gives us an insight as to what is so special about the elite athletes' mental abilities, which allows them to express great prowess in action.

/pdf/professional-athletes-have-extraordinary-skills-for-rapidly-4x393jp3bi.pdf

Professional athletes have extraordinary skills for rapidly learning complex and neutral dynamic visual scenes.

https://cyberleninka.org/article/n/222524.pdf

3D-Multiple Object Tracking training task improves passing decision-making accuracy in soccer players

In our everyday life, processing complex dynamic scenes such as crowds and traffic is of critical importance. Further, it is well documented that there is an age-related decline in complex perceptual-cognitive processing, which can be reversed with training. It has been suggested that a specific dynamic scene perceptual-cognitive training procedure [the three-dimensional multiple object tracking speed task (3D-MOT)] helps observers manage socially relevant stimuli such as human body movements as seen in crowds or during sports activities. Here, we test this assertion by assessing whether training older observers on 3D-MOT can improve biological motion (BM) perception. Research has shown that healthy older adults require more distance in virtual space between themselves and a point-light walker to integrate BM information than younger adults. Their performances decreased markedly at a distance as far away as 4 m (critical for collision avoidance), whereas performance in young adults remained constant up to 1 m. We trained observers between 64 and 73 years of age on the 3D-MOT speed task and looked at BM perception at 4 and 16 m distances in virtual space. We also had a control group trained on a visual task and a third group without training. The perceptual-cognitive training eliminated the difference in BM perception between 4 and 16 m after only a few weeks, whereas the two control groups showed no transfer. This demonstrates that 3D-MOT training could be a good generic process for helping certain observers deal with socially relevant dynamic scenes.

Perceptual-cognitive training improves biological motion perception: evidence for transferability of training in healthy aging

Speech understanding is improved when the observer can both see and hear the talker. This study compared the effects of reduced visual acuity on auditory-visual (AV) speech-recognition in noise among younger and older adults. Two groups of participants performed a closed-set sentence-recognition task in one auditory-alone (A-alone) condition and under three AV conditions: normal visual acuity (6/6), and with blurred vision to simulate a 6/30 and 6/60 visual impairment. The results showed that (1) the addition of visual speech cues improved speech-perception relative to the A-alone condition, (2) under the AV conditions, performance declined as the amount of blurring increased, (3) even under the AV condition that simulated a visual acuity of 6/60, the speech recognition scores were significantly higher than those obtained under the A-alone condition, and (4) generally, younger adults obtained higher scores than older adults under all conditions. Our results demonstrate the benefits of visual cues to enhance speech understanding even when visual acuity is not optimal.

The effects of blurred vision on auditory-visual speech perception in younger and older adults

Healthy aging is associated with a number of perceptual changes, but measures of biological-motion perception have yielded conflicting results. Biological motion provides information about a walker, from gender and identity to speed, direction, and distance. In our natural environment, as someone approaches us (closer distances), the walker spans larger areas of our field of view, the extent of which can be underutilized with age. Yet, the effect of age on biological-motion perception in such real-world scenarios remains unknown. We assessed the effect of age on discriminating walking direction in upright and inverted biological-motion patterns, positioned at various distances in virtual space. Findings indicate that discrimination is worse at closer distances, an effect exacerbated by age. Older adults’ performance decreases at distances as far away as 4 m, whereas younger adults maintain their performance as close as 1 m (worse at 0.5 m). This suggests that older observers are limited in their capacity to integrate information over larger areas of the visual field and supports the notion that age-related effects are more apparent when larger neural networks are required to process simultaneous information. This has further implications for social contexts where information from biological motion is critical.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1068/i0485

Healthy Older Observers Cannot Use Biological-Motion Point-Light Information Efficiently within 4 m of Themselves:

Purpose. The present study assessed whether different curve geometries involve different perceptual processing levels and whether these perceptual requirements can interact with the normal aging process. Methods. Amplitude thresholds for three different curve types were assessed for young and older observers using 2AFC psychophysical methods. The stimuli were individually adjusted for visibility. The three stimulus types evaluated represented a bell shape, a quadratic, and a compressed arc function. Results. As predicted, the geometry influenced the perception of curvature where the compressed arc was most difficult to perceive followed by the quadratic and bell-shaped curves. Moreover, older observers showed relatively higher thresholds for the quadratic and compressed arc shapes, while they had similar thresholds to the younger observers for the bell-shaped function. Conclusions. In general, the data support the notion that aging affects the processing of curvature requiring the integration of oriented receptors. This is in accordance with studies that have found reduced orientation selectivity of cortical neurons in senescent animals. Our findings suggest that older observers would have more difficulties with form discrimination tasks where curvature is an inherent component of the image and also predict age-related differences in perceiving ophthalmic lens-induced distortions. (Optom Vis Sci 2007;84:1087–1092)

Normal Aging and the Perception of Curvature Shapes

Trained Older Observers Are Equivalent to Untrained Young Adults for 3D Multiple-Object-Tracking Speed Thresholds

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