Microsaccades and interest areas during free-viewing sport task

Abstract

Microsaccades are important fixation eye movements for visual scene perception. Compared to novices, athletes make fewer fixations of longer duration toward limited interest areas crucial for action prediction. Thus, our aim was to study the microsaccade features during those fixations. Gaze behaviour of expert and novice table tennis players was recorder during a task in which subjects were instructed to predict the direction of the ball after the opponent's throw. Three interest areas from the opponent's body and one from the ball trajectory were identified. We analysed correctness of predictions, fixations, microsaccades and saccades to estimate the relationship between eye movements toward interest areas and success in the task. Compared to novices, experts fixated more on hand-racket during forehand and on trunk during backhand drive technique. Longer fixations on hand-racket and trunk were associated with higher microsaccade rate with a narrower directional distribution of them. It probably means that athletes focused their gaze on these small areas, suggesting enhanced attention mainly to them, and fewer consideration for the surrounding regions. We can assume that microsaccade rate and average direction could be related to the salience of interest areas during performance.

Eye movements reflect expertise development in hybrid search

“…After locating and perceiving a target, observers must decide whether to act on that information (e.g., note the presence of a radiological anomaly and throw a flag in football). Decision speed and accuracy often separate experts from novices, as experts have been found to be faster and/or more accurate than novices in sports (e.g., Alder et al 2014;Casanova et al 2013;Crespi et al 2012;Del Campo et al 2018;Hancock and Ste-Marie 2013;Piras et al 2017;Schnyder et al 2014;Williams et al 1994;Williams and Davids 1998), radiology (e.g., Litchfield and Donovan 2016;Manning et al 2006;Wood et al 2013), and many other domains (see Brams et al 2019). Beyond behavioral metrics of decision speed and accuracy, expertise effects can be Papesh et al Cogn.…”

Perception and Action in Sports. On the Functionality of Foveal and Peripheral Vision

“…The interaction with attentional capabilities, however, and particularly research directly combining attention and vision measures in sport has been addressed only rudimentarily. Piras et al (2017) suggested to study microsaccades as they might signal the direction of covert attention, thus, disentangling the current location of gaze from the location of attention (i.e., the microsaccade direction). But, this approach challenges eyetracking technology, particularly when investigating complex movement behavior.…”

Microsaccades in applied environments: Real-world applications of fixational eye movement measurements

“…Otero-Millan, Macknik, Langston, & Martinez-Conde, 2013;Otero-Millan et al, 2008). Moreover, FEMs have been quantified with head-unrestrained fixation (Aytekin, Victor, & Rucci, 2014;Martinez-Conde et al, 2006), with dynamic artificial stimuli (Laubrock, Engbert, & Kliegl, 2008;Otero-Millan et al, 2008), during the observation of art (Troncoso, Macknik, Otero-Millan, et al, 2008), and during free-viewing of dynamic video (Piras et al, 2017;Roberts et al, 2013). Although some FEM parameters change with experimental context (for example, variations in task difficulty can produce changing microsaccade rates (Otero-Millan et al, 2008;Siegenthaler et al, 2014)) some key characteristics of FEMs remain unchanged across varying research scenarios, as discussed below.…”

“…Several recent studies have moreover used microsaccade direction to assess differences between the attentional focus of novice versus elite athletes (further discussed later in this review; (Piras, Raffi, Lanzoni, Persiani, & Squatrito, 2015;Piras et al, 2017)).…”

“…In a subsequent study by the same group, observers again viewed pre-recorded table tennis videos, but their fixations were unconstrained (Piras et al, 2017). That is, novices and expert players were allowed to move their eyes freely across the videos, instead of maintaining fixation on the coach's chest.…”