Perceptual-cognitive skills in sports

Perceptual-cognitive skills are essential for obtaining high-level performance. These skills are defined as the ability to identify and process environmental information, and integrate it with known information, in order to select and perform appropriate actions. Among these skills, the literature has shown that in aiming and intercepting tasks an important role is played by an ocular behavior called “quiet eye“, defined as “the last fixation before the critical movement directed towards a specific location or object of the visual field, whose visual angle is not higher than 3^rd and whose duration is not less than 100 milliseconds“. Literature has shown that the most experienced players have a long duration of the quiet eye, and that this is also associated with high levels of sports performance in tasks of aiming at a target and intercepting objects (tipically in sports such as basketball, golf, football, volleyball,  shooting, shooting, tennis, badminton…). Many researches have also shown that it is possible to “train” athletes to use or improve this fixation, by working on “what to watch” and “how to watch” during the aiming or interception action, with benefits on sports performance, both in experimental conditions and in playing conditions, whitch are characterized by high levels of competitive anxiety.

Researchers