Comparison of saccadic eye movements and facility of ocular accommodation in female volleyball players and non‐players

Abstract

There is controversy on the interaction of sport exercise and visual functions. Some aspects of visual skills have been evaluated in volleyball players. Eighty-three normal females were categorized in four groups; non-players (NP), beginner volleyball players, intermediate and advanced players. Facility of accommodation and far saccade for optotypes at three distances were measured. The athletes showed better facility of accommodation and saccadic eye movement (SEM) than the non-playing control group. There was a significant difference (P<0.001) between NP and beginner players with advanced players and intermediate players. There are mutual interrelations between the visual system and sensory-motor coordination of the whole body. In a "programed" activity many motor and sensorial elements interactively influence one another. The visual system, as the most important coordinator, navigates the "programed" activities. The facility of accommodation shows how fast clear vision can be accomplished. The SEM shows how fast visual system can fixate on an object. Improvement of these two parameters indicates that the visual system can change fixation very fast and clearly see a new fixation point promptly. These are the requirement for a good volleyball player; hence, we find better visual performance in advanced players than in others.

Cue Usage in Volleyball: A Time Course Comparison of Elite, Intermediate and Novice Female Players

“…In the current experiment however, participants could see both sides of the net with minimal head movements. In a real set-up, elite players would probably also benefit more from their better visuo-spatial attentional processing skills [ 38 , 39 ]. Therefore, differences in gaze behaviour between the groups would possibly have been larger in an in situ blocking task.…”

Influence of the Plantar Cutaneous Information in Postural Regulation Depending on the Age and the Physical Activity Status

“…Although aging has deleterious effects on balance control, the iterative stimulations of the visual, vestibular and proprioceptive systems, induced by the regular practice of physical activity, are known to preserve their functional abilities (Gauchard et al, 2001 , 2003 ; Ribeiro and Oliveira, 2007 ) and can even improve their contribution in the postural regulation (Quarck and Denise, 2005 ; Jafarzadehpur et al, 2007 ; Aman et al, 2015 ). Moreover, the beneficial effects of the physical activity can also contribute to enhance the ability to detect the plantar pressure distributions (Schlee et al, 2007 ; Li and Manor, 2010 ).…”

Response Time, Visual Search Strategy, and Anticipatory Skills in Volleyball Players

“…In this regard, volleyball has been extensively investigated, but we still do not have exhaustive results that let us know about better visual search strategy of expert over novice players. Some authors, using simple laboratory tasks, demonstrated that there are specific visual skills and better results in advanced volleyball players compared with beginners [7–9]; others showed faster simple reaction times (RTs) in expert than novice players [10–12]; still others established some differences in gaze strategy due to the level of expertise [13–15]; and a few studies have reported athletes performing a little faster than novices, in the choice of RT tasks with generic stimuli [11, 16]. …”