State anxiety and visual attention: The role of the quiet eye period in aiming to a far target

Abstract

In this study, we examined how individuals controlled their gaze behaviour during execution of a far aiming task and whether the functional relationship between perception and action was disrupted by increased anxiety. Twenty participants were trained on a simulated archery task, using a joystick to aim and shoot arrows at the target, and then competed in two counterbalanced experimental conditions designed to manipulate the anxiety they experienced. The specific gaze behaviour measured was the duration of the quiet eye period. As predicted, accuracy was affected by the duration of the quiet eye period, with longer quiet eye periods being associated with better performance. The manipulation of anxiety resulted in reductions in the duration of quiet eye. Our results show that the quiet eye period is sensitive to increases in anxiety and may be a useful index of the efficiency of visual orientation in aiming tasks.

Anxiety, movement kinematics, and visual attention in elite-level performers.

“…The behaviors have been reported to be affected by state anxiety, with a shift towards a more stimulus-driven control of attention (cf. Wilson et al, 2008). Similarly, a prolonged QE Our findings support earlier reports where increases in anxiety have been shown to negatively affect QE characteristics.…”

“…However, in studies investigating the effects of anxiety on QE characteristics there have been consistent results indicating a decrement in performance as a result of a reduction in QE duration (Behan & Wilson, 2008;Wilson et al, 2009a;Vickers & Williams, 2007). In the current study, a significant difference in performance outcome was observed across the two anxiety conditions with reduced performance scores being evident in the high anxiety condition.…”

“…The authors concluded that at high levels of anxiety visual attention is directed externally to critical task information and appears to protect athletes from 'choking'. Behan and Wilson (2008) Significant reductions in QE duration and free throw success rate as a result of increased anxiety were reported. These findings suggest that the control of visual attention is critical during high pressure situations, with longer QE durations enabling more accurate actions to be executed.…”

“…Behan & Wilson, 2008;Nieuwenhuys, Pijpers, Oudejans, & Bakker, 2008;Wilson, Wood & Vine, 2009). An increase in anxiety has been reported to reduce the efficiency of gaze Anxiety & Performance 5 behavior in a multitude of perceptual-motor tasks (Janelle, 2002) as indexed by higher search rates, (Williams, Vickers, & Rodrigues, 2002), an inefficient use of the fovea (Williams & Elliott, 1999), and a shorter quiet eye (QE) duration (Behan & Wilson, 2008). The QE was defined by Vickers (1996) as the final fixation or tracking gaze that is located on a specific location or object in the visuo-motor workspace within 3° of visual angle for a minimum of 100ms.…”

Effects of anxiety and cognitive load on instrument scanning behavior in a flight simulation

“…A number of studies have found supporting evidence for the predictions of ACT on gaze behavior [4,5,6,7,8]. Anxiety has been shown to increase the frequency of fixations on goal-irrelevant stimuli [8] and to reduce the duration of ordinarily long target-focused fixations [5,9,7].…”