The development of the eye.

Reactive agility (RA) directly refers to athletes’ visuomotor processing of the specific conditions for team sports. The aim of the study was to identify the factors among age, gender, sport discipline, time participation in a sports activity, reaction time, and visual field which could have an impact on visual-motor performance in RA tasks in young, competitive team sports players. The study included boys (n = 149) and girls (n = 157) aged 13–15 participating in basketball, volleyball and handball. Anthropometric measurements were carried out, and the Peripheral Perception (PP) test was used to evaluate the visual-motor performance under laboratory conditions. The Five-Time Shuttle Run to Gates test was used to determine the RA. A multiple regression analysis was performed to identify the relationships between the visual-motor performance in an RA task (dependent variable) and the remaining independent variables (continuous and categorical). The findings of the current study indicate that the main predictive factors of visual-motor performance in RA among young athletes are gender (s = −0.46, p < 0.000) and age (s = −0.30, p < 0.000). Moreover, peripheral perception positively affected the achievements in the RA task in boys (s = −0.25, p = 0.020). The sport discipline does not differentiate the visual-motor performance in RA in team sports players in the puberty period.

Predicting Visual-Motor Performance in a Reactive Agility Task from Selected Demographic, Training, Anthropometric, and Functional Variables in Adolescents.

Visual skills in sport are considered relevant variables of athletic performance. However, data on the specific contribution of stereopsis—as the ability to perceive depth—in sport performance are still scarce and scattered in the literature. The aim of this review is therefore to take stock of the effects of stereopsis on the athletic performance, also looking at the training tools to improve visual abilities and potential differences in the visuomotor integration processes of professional and non-professional athletes. Dynamic stereopsis is mainly involved in catching or interceptive actions of ball sports, whereas strategic sports use different visual skills (peripheral and spatial vision) due to the sport-specific requirements. As expected, professional athletes show better visual skills as compared to non-professionals. However, both non-professional and professional athletes should train their visual skills by using sensory stations and light boards systems. Non-professional athletes use the visual inputs as the main method for programming motor gestures. In contrast, professional athletes integrate visual information with sport expertise, thus, they encode the match (or the athletic performance) through a more complex visuomotor integration system. Although studies on visual skills and stereopsis in sports still appear to be in their early stages, they show a large potential for both scientific knowledge and technical development.

Stereopsis in Sports: Visual Skills and Visuomotor Integration Models in Professional and Non-Professional Athletes

Visual processing, visual fields, and visual reaction times are essential to the performance of numerous sports and play a role in athletic injuries. Vision training, a process using visual exercises as part of a structured sports conditioning program, can be used to both enhance sports performance and prevent injury by improving neurovisual processing. In this review, evidence and methods concerning vision training programs are presented with the results suggesting performance enhancement and/or injury prevention, primarily concussion. Multiple studies are reviewed and utilized as examples that vision training programs designed to improve athletic performance or prevent injury are effective. We conclude from the collected evidence and theoretical considerations that vision training for numerous sports can be implemented with goals to improve performance and/or decrease injuries, specifically concussion. Key Points (1) In this opinion paper, we believe that vision training improves neurovisual processing. The vision training improves certain brain functions. (2) That vision training programs as part of athlete conditioning can improve athletic performance. Eye-hand coordination, reaction times and peripheral awareness improve on the field of play. This benefit can be sport specific with some sports benefiting more than others. (3) There is emerging evidence that concussion rates can be decreased following pre-season vision training programs. The cause and effect need to be better established and future research should address this opinion. Original Article Clark_173461.indd 1 07/01/20 11:51 AM J Sports Perf Vis Vol 1(1):e8–e16; May 19, 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International License. ©Clark et al. Vision Training and Reaction Training for Improving Performance and Reducing Injury Risk in Athletes e9 Approximately 80 percent of the sensory input to the brain comes from the visual system and systems to process visual information. Multiple pathways in the central nervous system process visual inputs to determine where and what the eyes see, allowing the brain to analyze the location and movement of visual objects in space. This visual-spatial analysis of the brain is a critical component of numerous sports and athletic skills. Conditioning and training for most sports focus on known methods for improving players’ skills. According to the principle of specificity, a general principle of athletic training, the “training program must stress the physiological systems that are critical for optimal performance in a given sport to achieve specific training adaptations and goals.” Based on this principle, it would seem to that to optimize a player’s skill, the visual-spatial analysis system— that is the eye-brain axis—should be an emphasis of conditioning and training. This is especially relevant in sports involving multiple players and a dynamic range of visual activity. The assumption being that the training is transferable to the sport’s activities. There is an emerging discipline of vision training for performance enhancement in sports—the theory being that if an athlete can see and process visual information better then their performance will improve as well. This discipline is gaining traction with some professional sports teams as well as college teams using vision training methods with their athletes. There are of course exceptions in that the visual abili-ties of a traditional wrestler may not be as critical as a football quarterback. The wrestler can do a lot of his/her sport by “feel” whereas the quarterback must be aware of and track up to 21 people on a football field. In the process of using vision training to improve performance, it has been found that vision training may impact injury prevention. For coaches and athletes, preventing injuries that threaten a player’s career of long-term health is paramount. Particularly with a growing body of research focusing on the neurologic sequelae of sport-related concussion, a growing em-phasis is being placed on the prevention of traumatic brain injury from sport. The theory that vision training could help prevent injury, especially head trauma, is actively being elucidated in the literature. We believe that the brain training conditions the brain and helps prevent the concussions by being more field aware and helps recovery by having experience in brain training for rehab post-concussion. There are several studies using vision training programs and methods to improve athletic performance as well as injury prevention. The studies reviewed involve various sports, including baseball, football, softball, soccer, basketball, and table tennis, and various proficiency levels of athletes, from high school to elite professionals. While the studies often focus on performance enhancement or injury prevention, this opinion paper presents both to link the two and as similar vision training methods seem to improve both endpoints based on the studies reviewed. By implementing vision training as part of athletic conditioning, performance enhancement and injury prevention can be improved together, thus giving it value for the entire sports team—athlete, coaches, medical staff, and parents. METHODS OFTEN USED FOR VISION TRAINING Vision training incorporates the concept of “lighting up” complex pathways of cortical function. The goal is to train or “stress” those pathways. Visuomotor skills require the processing of sensory information and coordination between the occipital lobe and motor cortex. Goodale and Milner introduced an influential model of visual processing in 1992, which incorporated two distinct anatomic visual processing pathways in the primary visual cortex. They postulated a dorsal and ventral stream —the “what” and “how” pathways, respectively. The dorsal stream involves “conscious perception” or the “what” component which includes characterization of objects with long term, action planning of remembered information; while the ventral system controls real-time guidance, immediate action, and reaction to visual input or the “how” pathway. It has also been postulated that the ventral system is critical in “object vision” while the dorsal system is crucial in “spatial vision.” For a football quarter-back tracking 21 objects on the field of play requires the integration of both systems. The independence of these pathways has been debated since the concept was introduced, with newer theories suggesting a more dynamic interplay that guides perception and action. Clark_173461.indd 2 07/01/20 11:51 AM J Sports Perf Vis Vol 1(1):e8–e16; May 19, 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International License. ©Clark et al. Vision Training and Reaction Training for Improving Performance and Reducing Injury Risk in Athletes e10 These pathways and coordination with the motor cortex are critical for optimal athletic performance. While immediate reaction to visual sensory information plays an important part in athletic competition, the conscious perception of recognized patterns of visual information is also important. Several vision training methods have been used both for performance enhancement and injury prevention. The following is not comprehensive but is designed to give a short overview of some of the methods used in studies referenced here. Dynavision D2 light board (Dynavision International LLC., West Chester, Ohio): This is an FDA-cleared device used to train reaction time and implement executive processing. In this exercise, the athlete stands in front of the Dynavision board and uses peripheral and central vision to press flashing lights as they appear. They also simultaneously complete executive and verbal tasks, such as calling out or adding numbers, word-finding, or memory tests. Tachistoscope: This is a device used to train the brain to recognize images faster and improve conscious perception. Sports-related images are flashed on a screen for 0.3 seconds with numbers. The athlete must call out the numbers. As the training progresses, the amount of numbers increases with varying backgrounds to work on contrast sensitivity and executive processing. The athletes are then required to recall the numbers and describe the images associated. When an alphanumeric and image description is the output task it is thought that the athlete is training left and right brain executive functions to improve speed and ability to process said visual information. Strobe glasses: These stroboscopic glasses are designed to improve visual processing, specifically coordination between the occipital and motor cortex. They have an LED lens that flashes on and off with a prescribed duty cycle, blocking visual input during catching drills. For example, a ball is thrown to the glasses-wearer and the image of the ball coming towards the wearer appears and disappears rapidly. The lenses speed of flash is highest in the initial training stages, allowing more visual input. The rapidity with which they flash slows as the athlete adapts, forcing the athlete to rely on less visual input to process spatial information of an object in flight. People with a seizure disorder or seizure susceptibility should consult their physician before using strobe glasses. Saccadic eye charts or Hart charts: This equipment consists of two charts of rows of letters, one small and one large. These can be used in varying ways to improve accommodation, eye movements (saccades), and visual attention. For example in one method, the participants stand approximately ten feet away from the larger chart and hold the smaller chart in hand. The participant then alternates reading a line from the distance chart and near chart. Overtraining, the distances of these charts are altered. This activity trains eye discipline in that the eyes need to use muscle memory to go between two sites. The task

/pdf/vision-training-and-reaction-training-for-improving-1kcqvzpxx9.pdf

Vision Training and Reaction Training for Improving Performance and Reducing Injury Risk in Athletes: Sports Vision Training

Este estudio presenta la relacion entre los movimientos sacadicos (MS) y las fijaciones en un ambiente virtual 2D con el rendimiento deportivo, en tenistas prejuveniles colombianos. Metodos: un grupo de jugadores de ranking avanzado y otro de ranking intermedio (segun el registro de la Federacion Colombiana de Tenis), se enfrentaron a hacer visualizaciones de un punto rojo sobre una pantalla negra en un ambiente virtual 2D. Para ello, se realizaron dos actividades indeterminadas y dos predeterminadas en los mismos intervalos de tiempo (300 y 500 milisegundos), con desplazamientos horizontales y verticales del movil. Resultados: Las variables de estudio fueron la cantidad y duracion de las fijaciones y los MS en cada una de las tareas por grupo de medicion. Los datos analizados fueron los promedios, las desviaciones estandar de las cantidades de fijaciones. Tambien se realizo una prueba t que permitio hallar un nivel de significancia p< 0,5 para dos (300 ms determinado y 500 ms indeterminado), de las cuatro actividades dentro del protocolo. Conclusiones: los tenistas del grupo avanzado mostraron un patron oculomotor con menor dispersion y mayor cantidad de las fijaciones, indicando asi un factor caracteristico respecto de sus pares intermedios.

Relación de los movimientos sacádicos en un ambiente virtual 2D con el rendimiento de tenistas prejuveniles colombianos

Binocular vision is the most important visual cue for spatial orientation in many sports. In this study, we investigated how binocular vision was influenced by an eye training program that may be used to improve individual's oculomotor function. The experiment involved twenty-four female student athletes from team ball sports (soccer, basketball, handball). After an initial testing session, 12 participants were randomly allocated to the experimental group. Optometric investigation which included synoptophore testing and a test of dissociated horizontal phoria based on the Maddox method was performed three times: before the experiment, after eight weeks of eye training (3 times a week for 20 minutes), and four weeks after the experiment was terminated. Eye exercise methodology was based on orthoptic, sport and psychological aspects of performance. The phoria screening examination showed that exophoria was the most frequent disorder of binocular vision. Low fusional vergence range was also observed. Following the training period, 3 of the 6 oculomotor variables improved. The greatest effect was observed in near dissociated phoria (χ(2) =14.56, p=0.001 for the right eye; χ(2) =14.757, p=0.001 for the left eye) and fusional convergence (χ(2) =8.522, p=0.014). The results of the retention test conducted four weeks after the experiment confirmed the effectiveness of the vision training program. The results of the study suggest that binocular functions are trainable and can be improved by means of appropriate visual training.

/pdf/the-effects-of-sports-vision-training-on-binocular-vision-57of5hk4t5.pdf

The Effects of Sports Vision Training on Binocular Vision Function in Female University Athletes

In this study, we conducted an experiment in which we analyzed the possibilities to develop visual skills by specifically targeted training of visual search. The aim of our study was to investigate whether, for how long and to what extent a training program for visual functions could improve visual search. The study involved 24 healthy students from the Szczecin University who were divided into two groups: experimental (12) and control (12). In addition to regular sports and recreational activities of the curriculum, the subjects of the experimental group also participated in 8-week long training with visual functions, 3 times a week for 45 min. The Signal Test of the Vienna Test System was performed four times: before entering the study, after first 4 weeks of the experiment, immediately after its completion and 4 weeks after the study terminated. The results of this experiment proved that an 8-week long perceptual training program significantly differentiated the plot of visual detecting time. For the visual detecting time changes, the first factor, Group, was significant as a main effect (F(1,22)=6.49, p<0.05) as well as the second factor, Training (F(3,66)=5.06, p<0.01). The interaction between the two factors (Group vs. Training) of perceptual training was F(3,66)=6.82 (p<0.001). Similarly, for the number of correct reactions, there was a main effect of a Group factor (F(1,22)=23.40, p<0.001), a main effect of a Training factor (F(3,66)=11.60, p<0.001) and a significant interaction between factors (Group vs. Training) (F(3,66)=10.33, p<0.001). Our study suggests that 8-week training of visual functions can improve visual search performance.

https://sciendo.com/pdf/10.1515/hukin-2015-0051

The Efficiency of a Visual Skills Training Program on Visual Search Performance

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Mikołaj Markiewicz

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

The Effects of Sports Vision Training on Binocular Vision Function in Female University Athletes

The Efficiency of a Visual Skills Training Program on Visual Search Performance