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

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.

The Time Course of Event-Related Brain Potentials in Athletes’ Mental Rotation With Different Spatial Transformations

Studies have found that athletes outperformed non-athletes in mental rotation tasks with both object-based and egocentric transformations (ET), but the effect of sport expertise on the processing stages (i.e., perceptual stage, rotation stage, and decision stage) remains conflicted. Bearing the view that the stages occur sequentially and the high temporal resolution of event-related brain potentials, this study focused on brain processing during mental rotation and was designed to determine the time course of electrophysiological changes in athletes and non-athletes. A total of 42 divers and non-athletes were recruited for the study. A mental body rotation task with object-based and egocentric transformation conditions was conducted, and the reaction time (RT), accuracy, performance stages, N2 latency, amplitude, and the amplitude of rotation-related negativity (RRN) were recorded. Behavioral results demonstrated higher accuracy for athletes at 120° and 180°. Moreover, as compared to non-athletes, the enlarged amplitude of N2 and RRN were confirmed in both transformations for athletes and were correlated with the performance stages and athletes’ professional training years. The present study provided a deeper insight into the relationship between sports training, behavior performance, and brain activity.

THE ISSUE OF SPORT SPECIALIZATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SPORT EXPERTISE

There are two different ways how to achieve sport expertise. First is called „early sport specialization“ and second is called „early sport sampling“. Although, early sport specialization is associated with negative physical, psychological and social development consequencies, researches claim that early specialized approach to sports training is necessary to achieve elite sport performance because of 10.000 hour rule and the theory of deliberate practice. On the other hand, experts who defend early sampling approach argue that sampling various sports during childhood and later start with special training is the basis for specialization in adolescence and adulthood and that athlete can benefit from such a transfer across sports. The aim of this review is to discuss early sport specialization and early sport sampling approach in term of expertise development in sport. Results suggest that despite a relatively high number of research in this area, it is still not clear which approach is more effective for attaining sport expertise. Conclusions of studies that examined the validity of the theory of deliberate practice and 10.000 hour rule in different sports are inconsistent. In addition, studies that dealt with early sampling approach examined mainly team sports and were conducted with retrospective design in which athletes do not have to recall their experiences or that the recall of experiences can be biased. Moreover, very few studies report early specialization of their athletes. Therefore, longitudinal studies are needed to reveal which approach is more effective to achieve expertise in sport.

Developing sport expertise in youth sport: a decision training program in basketball

Background This study has analyzed the impact of applying a decision training program, in which video-feedback and questioning were used, on the development of decision-making, skill execution and procedural knowledge in basketball players. Methods Participants were eleven male players aged between 12 and 13 years old (Mage = 12.75, SDage = .65), who were assigned to an experimental or control group within a pre-test/intervention test/retention test quasi-experimental design. The decision training program was applied over 11 weeks. Throughout this intervention, players had to analyze the causes and reasons for the decision made, using video feedback and questioning to this end. Decision-making and skill execution variables were analyzed using the French & Thomas (1987) observation instrument, while a validated questionnaire was used to assess procedural knowledge in basketball. Results The results reported that sport expertise improved in players from the experimental group, who had significantly higher intervention test scores for successful decisions and skill executions when compared to players in the control group. In the intra-group analysis, the experimental group significantly improved in the intervention test compared to the pre-test, in terms of some of the variables of decision-making, skill execution and procedural knowledge. Discussion These results reinforce the idea of including cognitive tools in training, such as video-feedback and questioning, to improve sport expertise in players’ formative stages, and presumably to improve their performance whilst maintaining decision training throughout time.