HSE 422 Lecture 1:

Visual Perception in Sports

Rob Gray
 Overview
• A basic review of human vision
• The relationship between “seeing” and sports
ability
– Do elite athletes have superior vision?
– Can you still be a good athlete with poor vision?
 The Human Visual System:
• The Eye
– focuses the incoming light by
adjusting the width of the
lens.
– creates an inverted image on
a special layer of cells at the
back of the eye called the
retina.
• analogous to the film in a
camera.

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 The Human Visual System:
• The Eye
– the ability to adjust the shape of the lens (a
process called accommodation) gets worse with
age as the lens gets thicker and less flexible.
• this may be a determinant of the length of an athlete’s
career.

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 The Human Visual System:
• The Retina
– contains 5 different layers of
cells.
– the deepest layer (the
photoreceptors) convert
incoming light into electrical
impulses.
– these impulses are sent to the
brain via a ‘cable’ leaving the
back of the eye called the
optic nerve.
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 The Human Visual System:
• The Retina
– There are two different types of
photoreceptors in the retina:
• Rods – very sensitive to low levels of light and
motion; insensitive to fine details and color.
• Cones – can detect fine details and colors but
do not work well at low levels of light.
– Effectively gives you two separate visual systems at
the same time.
– But where are the rods and cones located?

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 180, 000 Rods

2
Number per mm

Cones

Fovea Optic
Te Disk
m
po

l
sa
ra

Na
l

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So what does this all mean?
• Because cones are only in the world

the small center area of

your eye called the fovea,
we can only see fine details
of an object when we are what we see
looking directly at it.
• Therefore, we need to
spend a lot of effort
moving our eyes around!
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Some Functions of Vision
 (Static)Visual Acuity:
• Definition: The ability to see the fine details
in a scene.
– Varies with the distance to the objects you are
looking at, therefore, it is often expressed in
terms of the highest level of detail that can be
resolved for a particular distance (e.g., 20 ft).
– Essentially involves discriminating between
stimuli and space (e.g., is that part of a letter or
the white space between letters?).
• E.g., is this a letter ‘c’ or ‘o’

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 Measuring Acuity:
• Anything worse than 20/200 is considered to
be ‘legally blind’.
• Surprisingly, Snellen Acuity is often the only
thing we measure when assessing your visual
capabilities.
– Even though there are numerous other visual
functions including color vision, stereo vision,
motion perception, etc…

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 Factors Affecting Acuity:
Retinal Eccentricity –
position on the retina
where the letter is
presented.
Remember we only have
good acuity in about the
central 1 deg of vision
(processed by the cones in
the fovea).
Acuity falls off dramatically
as we move away from the
fovea.
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 Visual Acuity:
• Here is the size of
letters needed so
that acuity is the
same across your
visual field when you
stare at the center
black dot.

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 Factors Affecting Acuity:
Luminance level – the amount of light that
enters the eye.
Acuity is considerably worse at low light levels
(e.g., when reading a map in a car at night).
Although performance is poor, reading at low
light levels does not damage your eyes.

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 Dynamic Visual Acuity (DVA):
• In almost all sports, the athlete and/or
other objects are in constant motion.
• DVA refers to the ability to see fine details
for moving objects.
• Not predictable from SVA.
– Not just determined by performance of the cones.
– Also depends on eye movements, ability to maintain
fixation & sensitivity to motion in peripheral vision.

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 DVA:
Can be measured in many different ways.
E.g., Moving Landolt Ring test

Is the notch
up or down?

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 Eye Movements:
Remember because our high acuity vision
is restricted to the fovea we need to move
our eyes around to keep objects of interest
centered on this area.

image Eye movements

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 Eye Movements:
• Generated by relaxing/contracting opposing
muscles on opposite sides of the eyeball.

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 Eye Movements:

• There are 4 basic types of

eye movements.
• To illustrate, imagine a
baseball outfielder
catching a flyball.
– When the pitch is thrown
the fielder is staring at
home plate.

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 Eye Movements: Saccades
• When the ball is hit, the fielder must quickly
move his/her eyes from the plate to the location
of the ball.
– This is done with a saccade – a quick movement of
the eyes from one place to another, gets the fovea to
the new location.
• During a saccade the fielder is essentially blind because
the movement is so fast it causes the visual scene to be
blurred.

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 Eye Movements: Smooth Pursuit
• Now that the fielder has the ball in sight,
he/she must follow it with their eyes.
– This is done with smooth pursuit eye movements.
• relatively slow (60 to 100 deg /sec).
• much to slow to follow a baseball traveling at 100 mph
(500 deg/sec).
• there is some evidence that pro athletes have faster eye
movements than normal people.

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 Eye Movements: VOR
• As the fielder runs his/her heads bounces up
and down each time the foot strikes the
ground.
– If this was left uncorrected the ball would keep
moving off the fovea and become unclear.
– To counteract this effect, the brain has developed a
natural reflex called the Vestibular Ocular Reflex
(VOR) which automatically moves the eyes in the
opposite direction.

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 Eye Movements: Vergence
• Finally as the fielder prepares to
catch the ball, he/she needs to
keep both eyes locked on the ball.
– This is achieved by vergence eye
movements which rotate the left
and right eyes inward (or outward)
at the same rate.

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 Stereo Vision:
• Because our eyes are positioned on the front
of our head there is large part of the visual
world that is seen by both eyes.
– This is not the case for all animals.

PSY 449- Human Factors in Sport – 26

Rob Gray
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 Stereo Vision:
• Also, because our two eyes are separated by
a small distance (about 2.5”), each eye sees a
slightly different view of the same thing…

LEFT EYE RIGHT EYE 28

 Stereo Vision:
• It is this difference between the 2 eye’s images
helps us to judge relative depth (e.g., which
object is closest to us).
– This ability is called stereoacuity

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 From Eye to Brain:
– Half of the fibers
leaving the retina
cross over and go to
the left side of the
brain (the visual
cortex), while the
other half stay on visual cortex
the same side.

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 From Eye to Brain:
• The bottom line: all objects on the left side of
your visual field will be processed by the right
side or your brain & all objects on the right
side of the visual field will be processed by
the left side of your brain.
– We will come back to this later when we talk
about eye dominance.

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 The Visual Cortex:
• Divided into distinct groups of cells
(neurons) that process different
sources of information.
– V5- motion
– V4 – color
– V2- form, shapes

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 The Visual Cortex:
• This functional segregation has two important
consequences for sport:
1. Different features of objects are processed
relatively independently
• E.g., your perception of motion is not affected when you
switch from a yellow to green tennis ball.

2. It is possible to selectively lose the ability to process

a particular aspect of the visual world (e.g., due to
brain damage).

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Do Elite Athletes See Better Than We Do?
• The language we used to talk about sports
certainly seems to suggest this is the case:
Great hitters in baseball have “a good eye” and when they on a hitting
streak they “see the ball very well”
Elite point guards in basketball have “great court vision”
And a cricket batsman that is performing well is often said to “have his
eye in”
 Comparative visual abilities:
• We will see that it really depends on what type of
visual function you are talking about
– Visual hardware (this lecture) – basic sensory functions
like acuity, color, motion
– Visual software (coming soon) – how we use vision (visual
search, anticipation)
• A lot of supporting evidence but also lots of
contradictions
• Research in this area began in 1921 with a study
examining Babe Ruth.

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 The Babe Ruth Study
• Fullerton (1921)
– conducted a large number of tests
– In terms of vision:
• Ruth’s reaction time was 12% faster than
an average person.
• In another test, Ruth was flashed a card
with 8 letters on it for a fraction of a
second..he could read 6 correctly where
the average performance is 4.5.
**So, Ruth’s vision was better than an
average person but not super-human.
 Research Issues
• It has been very difficult for researchers to get
access to elite athletes. This has lead to many
problems:
– Often the subjects do not play a sport that requires
the visual skills being measured (e.g., softball
players).
– Differences between playing level are often not big
enough to find any effects.
– Small numbers of subjects makes it hard to find
statistical significance (low power).

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 Research Issues
• In the early 20th century visual aids
for sport were available, however,
coaches and athletes often saw
them as a sign of weakness.
• The introduction of contact lenses
in the 1950s helped reduce the
stigma associated with visual aids,
as well as provide a safer
alternative during sport.
 Research Issues
• Throughout the 1960s the sight of
famous athletes wearing glasses
(e.g., Billie Jean King) during sport
further reduced the negative
connotations, allowing research
into the role of vision in sport to
take off.
 Visual Acuity & Sport
• Ability to see details.
• Two basic types:
– Static Visual Acuity (SVA)
• Needed for skills like archery and golf putting where
objects are static (not moving).
– Dynamic Visual Acuity (DVA)
• Needed for skills like football quarterbacking where you
need to pick out objects that are in motion.

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 Static Visual Acuity (SVA)
• Measured with a Snellen Eye Chart.
– Acuity is measured by comparing
your performance to a ‘normal’
observer using the ratio:
lowest line a normal person can read from 20ft
lowest line you can read from 20 ft
The numerator is always 20.
If the numbers are the same (e.g., 20:20) you
have normal vision.
If the denominator is larger you have worse
than normal vision (e.g., 20/40, 20/100).

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 SVA

• Surprisingly, 15% of NFL

football players, 20% of
NBA basketball players, &
13% of Olympic athletes
have poorer than average
acuity.

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 And what about Babe Ruth..
• Due to complications from
cancer, it is rumoured
thatBabe played much of his
career with amblyopia
(severely degraded acuity) in
his left eye.
– his SVA was 20/200!

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 SVA: The Bottom Line
• Throw out Snellen eye charts when screening
an athlete!
– SVA is not strongly related to sports success.
– Perfectly clear vision is not a requirement.

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 Dynamic Visual Acuity (DVA):
• In almost all sports, the athlete and/or
other objects are in constant motion.
• DVA refers to the ability to see fine details
for moving objects.
• Not predictable from SVA.
– Not just determined by performance of the
cones.
– Also depends on eye movements, ability to
maintain fixation & sensitivity to motion in
peripheral vision.

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 DVA Research:
• Whiting & Sanderson(1974) – measured
correlation between DVA and ball catching
performance.
– Found that better catchers had higher DVA.
– Also found that DVA decreased as the speed
of the moving ‘C’ was increased.
• But not for everyone!

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 DVA Velocity Resistance:
poor

DVA

good

target speed

– Most people have worse DVA as speed increases (e.g., Subject A)

but others have DVA that is little effected by speed (Subject B).
– Maybe great athletes are “velocity resistant”?

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 DVA:
• Other studies have found only weak
relationships between DVA and skill level.
• Need more research!
• Also promising as a visual test for driving
and aviation.

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 Stereo Vision:

• Visual information
gained after the signals
from the 2 eyes are
combined.
– E.g., 3D movies &
posters.

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 Stereo Vision:
• Besides its entertainment value, stereo vision
seems to very important for judging the
distance and movement of objects that are
close to us.
– E.g., the final adjustments of the glove in
catching.
• Conflicting evidence on whether elite
athlete’s have better stereo vision.

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 Stereo Vision:
• Interestingly, some individuals are stereo
blind in certain parts of their visual field.
– Is this related to preference for position,
stance?

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 Peripheral Vision:
• Although most of what we do involves
central (foveal) vision, peripheral vision is
important for detecting the presence of
objects.
– E.g., approaching tacklers in football,
teammates to past the ball to in basketball.
– Because most of the time is spent ‘keeping the
eye on the ball’ a lot of what we see is in
peripheral vision.

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 Peripheral Vision:
• Measured using a perimeter.
– Displays small lights in various
location while the subject
stares straight ahead.
– Subject reports whether or
not they saw a light was
present.

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Peripheral Vision:

PSY 449- Human Factors in Sport – 57

Rob Gray
 Peripheral Vision:
• Some evidence that athletes have a larger
field of peripheral vision but also
conflicting studies.
• In many sports, good peripheral vision is
not necessary
– Important to do task analysis before diving
into research

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 Cross-Dominance:

• Hand Dominance: hand

that is used to perform
most actions.
• Eye Dominance: Eye that
is given priority when
information comes to
the brain

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 Cross-Dominance:
• There is some evidence that athletes who
are cross-dominant (e.g., left hand/right
eye OR right hand/left eye) perform better
than people who are not cross dominant.
• Why?
– Might have something to do with the
distance brain signals must travel.

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Can you still be a good athlete with poor vision?
 Degraded vision in sports
• Becoming a more and more important issue
because:
– Legal challenges to athlete being released or
prevented from participating due to failing a vision
test
– Increased interest in defining categories for the
Special Olympics
– Can be studied by simulation poor vision with
blurring lenses
 Degraded vision in sports
• In a few different studies it has been shown
that you need to make someone almost legally
blind (20/200 acuity) before you see a reliable
effect on sports performance
– Shown in cricket, free-throw shooting and golf
putting
 Degraded vision in sports
• E.g, Mann et al., 2007
– Hitting a cricket ball
– No drop in performance
until 20/200 (+3).
 Summary
• Not a strong link between basic visual
functions (visual hardware) and sport
performance
– Research is ambiguous at best
– Don’t need to be able to see perfectly to be an
athlete
– As we will soon see, the story will be different
when we look at visual software