Linking Perception to Action in Sport: Does superior visual perception explain why good players make it look easy?

It seems obvious that good vision is a pre-requisite for the exceptional visuomotor skills needed in many sports. For example, to catch a cricket ball requires anticipation of the speed and direction of travel of the ball. But do elite cricketers have superior vision than sub-elites? Does having 'excellent' vision go hand-in-hand with elite sporting ability? And if elites do have superior vision than non-elites, is this the cause or a consequence of their exceptional ability? These are the questions that are of interest to us in this research project.
From a review of 'popular' sports literature, it appears that two beliefs are commonly held, first, that athletes have superior use of their vision than non-athletes and second that vision therapy improves sporting performance. However, neither of these holds up under scientific scrutiny. Previous research has dismissed the influence of visual factors, but we suggest this is because others did not use the right tests: tests that measure visual brain function, not simply eye function. Our research will establish whether elite sporting performance is linked to visual abilities determined by brain functioning in vision-specific brain areas, and, if the two are linked, to examine how they are linked. Previous research in another elite population (pilots) shows that some laboratory measures of vision are linked to flying performance whereas clinical visual measures do not.
We will assess vision and visuo-motor skills in elite- and club-level cricketers and in novices. We have selected cricket because of the complexity of its visual demands. However, our results will generalise to other sports, particularly those with a fast-moving ball (e.g. tennis). We have established links with the England & Wales Cricket Board and with a centre of cricketing excellence and both will provide us with access to elite players for testing.
We will develop and run behavioural tests designed specifically to measure visual brain function. Studies of brain imaging tell us about brain functioning and connections between processing networks, but it is only feasible to study a small number of elite athletes using this approach. Our proposed behavioural studies thus offer a more practical approach to studying visual and fine-motor control abilities in elite athletes.
We will measure visual abilities in situations that mimic the sporting environment; for example, we will test the ability to see and discriminate motion and depth, and test the ability to anticipate the future location of a moving object. We will relate these vision measures to performance on a cricket task (one-handed catching) and to a more general hand-eye co-ordination task (pointing). We have infra-red motion-capture camera systems that allow limb and body movements to be carefully measured and monitored when a real-world task (e.g. catching a ball ejected from a machine) is undertaken. Thus, in addition to measuring visuo-motor task success (e.g. proportion of balls caught) we will establish the movement control parameters for individual sportspeople as they perform these tasks.
To ensure that we fully reveal the extent of the links between visual ability and the fine-motor control required in sport we will examine individual differences in vision between good and poor ball catchers under optimal visual conditions and when vision is degraded (e.g. low light levels) because it is here where the impact of vision-related differences may emerge or be exaggerated.
Although the focus here is to understand the link between visual and motor abilities in high-performance sport our results will hold direct relevance to everyday scenarios where visual perceptual skills limit motor control as we interact with the environment around us. Thus we aim to identify the nature of the relationship between visual and motor capabilities using elite sport as a vehicle for understanding how perception and action are linked in more everyday tasks.

Our understanding of visual brain processing has made major advances in recent years and yet, we are still a long way from understanding how visual neural processing limits fine-motor control as we interact with the environment around us. Such neural processing limitations will be particularly important where humans operate at the limit of their motor abilities and one such area is in elite sport. Elite versus non-elite differences in anticipatory skills have consistently been reported. However, there are unsubstantiated claims that these differences stem from an underlying superiority in the visual processing capabilities of elites. Past research in sportspeople has relied upon the use of standard clinical measures of vision. We argue that these are not sufficient to test specific neural visual function, and propose tests that will probe visual brain processing in detail, in participants with skills levels ranging from novice to elite. Interestingly, associations between military flying performance and laboratory, but not clinical, tests of vision have previously been reported. Our visual measures will include speed and motion discrimination, and tests of stereovision, and time-to-contact and flow parsing for dynamic targets. We will relate performance on these tests to catching performance for which we will have success measures and kinematic data. We start by examining the link between visual and catching ability under optimal viewing conditions but will repeat both the sensory and visuo-motor testing under conditions of degraded vision if differences in visual ability between good and poor catchers are not apparent with full vision. To assess the generalizability of our findings we will compare visual performance with that of a generic (pointing) task. Our aim is to characterise the nature of the relationship between visual sensory and visuo-motor behaviour using elite sport as a vehicle for the assessment of more general neural perception and action links.

The most immediate impact of our results/conclusions is likely to be felt in the sport of cricket whose
players will have participated widely in our research, and this impact will be generated irrespective
of the outcome of our experiments. If we do reveal links between measures of vision and visuomotor
performance, the potential impact upon this sport could be that detailed assessments of visual
performance helps to predict those who have elite potential and, following on from this, that vision
training offers a means to further improve performance. The same could potentially apply to many
other sports, in particular, fast-moving/ball-sports where visual demands are, as in cricket, exacting.

If, on the other hand, it transpires we find no evidence that excellent vision contributes to sporting
excellence there will again be an important impact because there are many extant, but currently
unsubstantiated, claims that vision training offers a means for enhancing performance in high-level
sportspeople. Should it emerge that visual and sporting abilities are not linked, these claims would be
seriously challenged and the very basis for vision training in sport would be undermined.

As well as sport-related tasks, our experiments include the generic visuomotor task of pointing. Should
we find links between visual abilities and performance on the pointing task, there is potential for our
research impact to extend well beyond high-level sport. For example, our results could have substantial
impact in more everyday situations, for example in training/selecting individuals who would be suitable
to carry out fine-motor control tasks on a production line, or in scenarios where vision is below normal
or visuomotor control is reduced (e.g. by ageing). For these reasons, our potential stakeholders come
from a wide variety of backgrounds, both within and outside the domain of sport.

As well as presentation to scientific audiences (conference presentations and peer-reviewed
publications), we will disseminate our results to the clinical and sport-science communities, to our
stakeholders (real and potential) and to the general public. To disseminate our findings as widely as
possible, and to engage with actual and potential stakeholders we will:

(i) Present our results at national and international conferences on vision & neuroscience,
optometry/ophthalmology and sport science.
(ii) Publish our results in high-impact, peer-review journals, in particular journals with a multi-
disciplinary readership.
(iii) Post the most salient findings from our research on discussion forums/interest groups
frequented by vision scientists, sports scientists and clinicians.
(iv) Design a stand/display that will be used at public engagement events such as the British Science
Festival and at public events/open days held at our universities.
(v) Invite representatives from all stakeholder groups to the University of Bradford for a workshop
that will run in the final three months of the grant. The purpose will be showcase our results
and to explore potential for application and exploitation of our findings.
(vi) Host a workshop at a national sports science conference in the final year of the project. The aim
will be to ensure maximum exposure of our findings to the sports science community so as
to enhance the likelihood of application and exploitation.
(vii) Disseminate findings to under-graduate and post-graduate students on relevant study
programmes at our institutions so as to ensure that we fulfil our commitment to provide
research-led teaching.