Browsing by Subject "quiet eye"

Action video games have been found to improve many cognitive skills. Most established findings are related to faster information processing speed and improved attentional capabilities. Many of the same cognitive processes are better on elite athletes of interceptive sports compared to non-elites. This study aimed to find some preliminary evidence whether the improvements in cognitive processes gained from action video gaming might be beneficial in ball sports. This was done by comparing the performance of action video game players and nonaction-video players on an anticipation of coincidence test. Anticipation of coincidence is a laboratory test, where the task is to anticipate when a moving object arrives at a certain point and to coincide a button press with it. Performance on the task is thought to depend on information processing speed and attentional capabilities. When the speeds and possible speed changes are similar to those encountered in real ball sports, elite athletes of these sports are generally more accurate in the task compared to non-elites. Elite athletes differ from non-elites in their gaze patterns as well. For example, athletes fixate to the target quicker and their quiet eye, meaning the last fixation or tracking gaze before a motor action on a specific target lasting at least 100 ms, is longer. Thus, it was studied whether action video gamers fare better on the anticipation of coincidence task in different constant speeds and in deceleration conditions, and whether their gaze patterns are different compared to non-gamers. 10 action video game players and 9 nonaction-video game players participated in the experiment. The results show that action video game players are more accurate in the task in most constant speed conditions and in a deceleration condition with slow speeds. There was some variation in gaze patters, including that action video gamers had quiet eye more often in fast speeds. The results suggest that action video game players can program more accurate motor responses based on the speed of the target and reprogram wrong motor actions better than nonaction-video game players. In addition action video game players are better able to track fast moving targets. As these skills are important in ball sports, this possible linkage between action video games and ball sports performance should be studied further.