Effects of mixed reality-based instruction on visual attention and stroke performance in novice badminton players

[Purpose] The purpose of this study was to examine the differences in visual search strategies between expert and novice badminton players while performing badminton serve. [Method] To this end, expert (more than 10 years experience) and novice (less than 6 months experience) badminton players performed 15 trials of two types of serve (i.e., short-serve and long-serve), in total 30 trials. All the participants’ eye movement was recorded during each trial, and mean fixation duration, fixation distribution, final fixation duration and location, and gaze entropy were analyzed. [Results] The results showed that there was no difference in mean fixation duration between expert and novice players. The analysis of mean fixation duration on each location showed that participants fixated more on the net while doing short serve whereas fixated more on the space when they did long serve. In particular, expert players fixated more on the space while doing long serve than novice players, and fixated more on the net and racquet for the short serve. However, novice players fixated more on the location of shuttle would be landed. The final fixation duration was not different between expert and novice players. Further, expert players showed higher gaze entropy than novice players. [Conclusion] The findings indicate that expert players fixated more on the net for the short serve, and the space for the long serve, and visual search strategies of experts were more varied than novice players.

Background. Despite its well-known importance in sports, agility is ambiguously defined and lack of research. Shuttle Run (SR) challenges physical quickness and is commonly used to improve the on-court agility of badminton players. In contrast, Reactive Initiation Training (RIT) challenges perceptual quickness, merely demanding rapid initiation of step toward the direction of shuttlecock. The current study compared SR with RIT to determine which one is more effective for improving on-court agility of novice badminton players. Methods. 20 novice badminton players were split in half to receive either RIT or SR on court for five days. Before and after training, participants were assessed on their ability to intercept the shuttlecocks randomly thrown by a coach to six corners of the court with and without visual occlusion of the coach. All trials of interception were videotaped by a motion camera for chronological analysis of initiation time, running time and total time. Results. The mean total times were greater with visual occlusion and varied systematically with the position of interception. Both training methods shortened the mean running time, however, only RIT additionally reduced the initiation time and its proportion on those time-consuming positions in the occluded condition. Therefore, RIT is more effective than SR to improve the on-court agility of novice badminton players, and the agility training for novice badminton players should be more perceptually than physically challenging to avoid vain effort and unnecessary injuries.

Event Abstract Back to Event Functional imaging of cortical responses in expert and novice badminton players while predicting the direction of a badminton stroke Michael Wright1* 1 Brunel University, Centre for Cognition and Neuroimaging, United Kingdom Abernethy et al. [1] showed that expert badminton players use the kinematic information of the opponent’s body movement to predict the direction of a stroke. We compared the fMRI BOLD response of expert and novice badminton players viewing 2 s video clips of an opposing player. Their task was to indicate by button press, where, of 4 possible court positions, a shot was directed. Separate blocks of 5 trials contained sequences occluded (a)160 ms before or (b) 80 ms after the racquet-shuttle contact; and (c) ´no-shot’control clips. A second version of the task used point-light stimuli. We tested 12 national or international level badminton players, 11 club players and 13 occasional players. We quantified the fMRI t-contrasts, for experimental conditions relative to controls, as % signal change in 9 paired (L & R hemisphere) regions of interest [2]. ANOVA revealed main effects of expertise in supplementary eye field, SEF (p < .005), supplementary motor area, SMA: ( p < .01), in two regions of inferior frontal gyrus: BA45 (p < .05) and BA47 (p < .05), and in inferior parietal lobule (p < .01). There was also a significant interaction between expertise and level of occlusion in SEF (p < .01) and in BA45 (p < .005) and BA47 (p < .005); such that experts showed proportionally greater activation in the pre-contact occlusion condition. In V5/MT, expert and novice responses were not significantly different. Full video and point-light versions of the task yielded very similar results. For experts, the pre-contact occlusion stimuli were strongly differentiated from control stimuli in SEF and in inferior frontal gyrus. This is consistent with these regions’ involvement in experts’ superior ability to analyse or model the kinematic information of an opponent’s body movement.

BackgroundPlayers’ multiple-object tracking (MOT) ability is very important in basketball because it may affect players’ sports decision-making (SDM), thus affecting the results of the game. The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences between expert and novice basketball players in MOT ability and SDM and to explore the correlation between basketball players’ visual attention and SDM.MethodsA total of 48 female basketball players (24 categorized in the expert group and 24 in the novice group) participated in the MOT task in Experiment 1 and the basketball 3 vs. 3 games in Experiment 2. Experiment 1 examined the difference in dynamic visual attention characteristics between expert players and novice players by changing the tracking number. Experiment 2 examined the differences between expert players and novice players through the SDM of basketball 3 vs. 3 games. Sports decisions were evaluated by basketball experts. MOT ability and SDM ability were analyzed through Pearson correlation.ResultsThe overall MOT accuracy of expert players (64.6%) and novice players (55.7%) was significantly different (χ2 = 59.693, P = 0.000). There was no significant difference in accuracy when tracking 2–3 targets (P > 0.05), but there was a significant difference in accuracy when tracking 4–6 targets (P < 0.05). The overall SDM accuracy of expert players (91.6%) and novice players (84.5%) was significantly different (χ2 = 31.975, P = 0.000). There was no significant difference between expert players and novice players in the accuracy of dribbling decision-making (P > 0.05), but there was a significant difference in the accuracy of passing decision-making and shooting decision-making (P < 0.01). When tracking 4–5 targets, the tracking score was positively correlated with the passing decision score and dribbling decision score of expert players, and the tracking score of novice players was positively correlated with the passing decision score (r > 0.6, P < 0.01).ConclusionsFirst, the tracking accuracy of expert players was significantly higher than that of novice players, especially when tracking 4–6 targets. As the number of targets increased, accuracy decreased. Second, the accuracy of expert players’ SDM was significantly higher than that of novice players, especially in passing decision-making and shooting decision-making. Expert players exhibited fast and accurate SDM. Third, there was a correlation between MOT ability and SDM performance. The MOT ability of 4–5 targets was positively correlated with passing decision-making, which was statistically significant. The correlation between the MOT ability and SDM performance of expert players was greater and more significant. Having too many targets to track (more than 6) interfered with players’ decisions.

Visual attention and cognitive performance in sheep

Badminton is a popular sport with a rich tradition in Pakistan twin cities Islamabad and Rawalpindi. In badminton, players are more susceptible to certain musculoskeletal problems due to the sport's dynamic character, abrupt accelerations and decelerations. Badminton has an injury rate of 1 to 7/1000 hours per person of playing time. Objective: To find out prevalence of musculoskeletal problem including pain among the badminton players played in various clubs of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Methods: 255 badminton players participated in a convenience sample-based cross-sectional study after ethical permission. The incidence of musculoskeletal discomfort in novice badminton players' shoulder, elbow, wrist, hands, thigh, hips, knee and ankle was measured using a self-drafted survey and the Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire. Data collection was done sports clubs of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Study ran from September 22, 2021, to June 30, 2022. SPSS version-25 software was used for data analysis. Results: The results showed prevalence was 16.5, back 18.4, hip 7.4, knee 28.6, ankle 16.5, elbow 22.4, wrist 21.2, low back 12.9, and shoulder 49.4. Among badminton players, the most common pain regions were the shoulder and knee. Other areas that players are less likely to have discomfort in include the hands, hips and ankles. Conclusions: Conclusions of study showed younger athletes had higher prevalence of musculoskeletal discomfort. Most prevalent pain areas among badminton players were the knee and shoulder.

Falls are a growing concern among older adults and individuals living with a neurodegenerative disease that affects movement control. Growing evidence continues to encourage researchers and clinicians to consider vision when evaluating movement control and potential risk of falling (Lord & Dayhew, 2001; Lord et al., 2010); however, recommendations and guidelines for evaluating vision beyond standard classification of a visual impairment (e.g. near-sightedness) continue to be limited (AGS/BGS, 2010). Vision is not just the ability to see accurately, it also includes the ability to direct visual gaze in the surrounding environment, perceive the spatial relationships between external objects and the body and use this information to plan and execute movement or adapt ongoing motor patterns (Patla, 1997). Adaptation of motor patterns to environmental constraints, particularly during gait, is an essential part of mobility function in daily life, and reductions in the ability to adapt gait increase ones’ risk of falling. Therefore, visual function as a whole is an essential component to fall risk and mobility function. Further, visual function may indirectly play a role in other aspects of fall risk. Research in the last decade or so has supported the idea that divided attention during dual tasking (performance of simultaneous motor and cognitive tasks) results in negative effects on gait and/or decreased cognitive task performance, for example increased stride to stride variability and decreased gait velocity (Springer et al., 2006; Hollman et al., 2007; Yogev-Seligmann et al., 2010; Decker et al., 2016; Pelosin et al., 2016). Risk of falling increases as the ability to dual task decreases (Springer et al., 2006). In a recent study of a group of individuals with Parkinson's disease and a group of older adults prone to falling, reduced function of the cholinergic system, which plays a role in orienting attention, was associated with reduced gait speed while dual task walking (Pelosin et al., 2016). The ability to orient one's attention to appropriate cues in the environment has a significant impact on mobility and when considering orientation of attention, vision comes to the forefront. Research has shown that humans use vision to scan relevant objects or events within a space to plan possible motor responses for maintaining motion (Patla, 1997; Hollands et al., 2002). If our ability to orient attention is in fact related to an increased risk of falling, how might a concurrent reduction in visual function exacerbate this risk? How vision works with attention orientation may be a key causal factor in falls and strategies put in place to mitigate this increased risk may be critical for future fall prevention strategies. In addition to the known affects Parkinson's disease (PD) has on overall body movement control, PD also significantly affects movement of the eyes (Chan et al., 2005; Terao et al., 2013), resulting in reduced voluntary visual sampling of the movement environment. The experiment recently conducted by Stuart et al. (2017) ‘Direct and indirect effects of attention and visual function on gait impairment in Parkinson's disease: influence of task and turning ‘provides a basis for discussion regarding the interaction between the cognitive construct of attention and visual function in adaptive gait control. These researchers studied visual behaviour in a large group of individuals with Parkinson's disease (N = 60) and age-matched older adults (N = 40) during several gait tasks including adaptive tasks, such as turning. The authors reported a reduced number of saccadic eye movements while walking in individuals with PD compared to age-matched participants. Moreover, the authors found that the PD group increased the number of saccades during complex adaptive tasks such as turning but that saccades decreased again while turning under dual task, supporting the hypothesis that individuals with PD have limited visual sampling of the movement environment particularly when attentional resources to the motor task are limited. However, the most interesting part of the article was the second objective using structural equation modelling (SEM) to explore the relationship of visual function, attention and gait performance. SEM revealed that visual function did not significantly account for changes to gait parameters in PD but rather worked indirectly through attention, whilst poor attention directly related to both poor saccade number and lower gait velocity. These results suggest that while reduced visual function reduces adaptive gait, it does so indirectly through the interaction of visual attention. While there are a number of limitations to generalizing the results of this single study, these results raise interesting questions regarding how visual function and attention work together to control adaptive gait and how alterations to either of these systems play a role in risk of falling, especially in an at-risk population. Of course, one cannot speak about research on visual attention without acknowledging the methodological challenges faced by researchers. While discussing these challenges is beyond the scope of this commentary, a relevant point is that examining visual attention during gait does not have well-accepted and/or validated tests unlike other aspects of visual function such as visual acuity or contrast sensitivity. Differences in methods used across studies make comparisons between studies difficult and slow gains in knowledge. Therefore, methodological considerations need to be at the forefront of further research on visual attention and gait. In closing, the article by Stuart et al. (2017) is among the first to explore the interactions of visual function, attention and gait. It represents an important gain in knowledge when considering current clinical guidelines for fall prevention, which at present have limited recommendations to measures of visual acuity and/or visual impairments such as cataracts and glaucoma. Stuart et al. (2017) provide evidence to suggest that we must consider visual function as a whole, which includes attention, to understand how their interaction influences adaptive gait. With further research grounded in the knowledge base of neuroscience, psychology, motor control and motor learning, we will provide a better understanding of how and why vision is essential for evaluating and investigating movement control such as gait and a person's potential risk of a fall.

IntroductionUnderstanding strategic situations is essential in sports. There has been relatively little research examining the effectiveness of action observation based on visual cues in strategic situations. This study investigated whether action observation with visual cues can help performers understand the strategic aspects of complex sports by analyzing the effect of text cue-based action observation and graphic cue-based action observation on the accuracy and speed of cognitive information processing in working memory.MethodsForty-four male and female novice badminton players participated in the experiment. They were randomly assigned to one of four groups: text cue-based action observation (TAO), graphic cue-based action observation (GAO), action observation (AO), and a control group (CON). The experimental design consisted of a pre-test, intervention, and post-test. The experiment analyzed the accuracy and response time of cognitive information processing in working memory.ResultsThe accuracy and response time analysis showed that the AO group significantly improved their cognitive performance accuracy and response time from pre-test to post-test compared to the control group. The TAO and GAO groups with visual cues significantly outperformed the AO and CON groups for accuracy. However, only the TAO group significantly outperformed the other groups in term of response time. The GAO group improved significantly compared to the CON group but not significantly compared to the AO.ConclusionThese results suggest that visual cues can influence the modulation of cognitive load in working memory and that TAO is a relatively more efficient perceptual-cognitive training method for novices.

The percentage of college students with disabilities has been growing and has doubled in the last two decades; thus, students with disabilities are pursuing college degrees in increasing numbers. Unfortunately, this population growth has not been matched with growth in available accommodative technologies in institutions of higher learning. Colleges and universities often do not have resources to fund and provide specific accommodative technology and support for this steadily increasing population. What is worse is that there is also a lag in emergent assessment and screening tools which are required to match student disabilities with appropriate accommodative technologies, resulting in a mismatch between student needs with appropriate accommodative technologies. The present pilot study was conducted with students with a range of disabilities, such as learning disabilities, emotional or psychiatric conditions, orthopedic or mobility impairments, attention-deficit disorder/attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, health impairments (HI), and multiple disabilities, which were assessed using a Flanker Task, specifically to determine how sensitive it was in detecting differences in their visual attention performance. This information could be used to predict whether the student would benefit from specific accommodative technologies. Undergraduate psychology students with and without disabilities volunteered to participate in a triple-blind study that sought to investigate whether their visual attention performance on a 10-min Flanker Task could be used to predict which students might benefit from visual accommodative technologies. The first experiment was used as a negative control to assess whether environmental distractions could interfere with participant visual attention. The second experiment compared the Flanker Task performance of students with and without disabilities in a controlled Neuropsychology Laboratory sound-attenuated environment. The third experiment evaluated the cumulative records for percent (%) accuracy and reaction times (RTs) for students with and without disabilities to examine patterns in visual attentional performance. The fourth experiment disaggregated the students with disabilities and examined their patterns in visual attentional performance. The results showed the Flanker Task was sensitive in detecting differences in students' visual attention performance between noisy and controlled environments differentiated students with and without disabilities. Furthermore, when students with disabilities were aggregated, their Flanker Task cumulative records were sensitive in detecting shifts in their visual attention behavior patterns. Lastly, the Flanker Task cumulative records were also sensitive in detecting disaggregated students with disability differences in their visual attention performance. The pilot study proved promising that a 10-min Flanker Task can be used as an effective screening tool to match students with disabilities with appropriate accommodative technologies based on their visual attentional abilities. This type of screening tool is easy to create, has minimal cost, and can be implemented quickly. This provides colleges and universities with an easy approach to assessing the needs of students with disabilities and tailoring appropriate assistive technologies.

The relationship between visual attention and stress is a long-standing question in cognitive science. There are few studies which indicate improvement in visual attention under stress while few other studies suggest that stress affect visual attention negatively. Even though the mental stress is a critical issue in the modern age, only a few studies investigate the impact of mental stress on visual attention. Several studies on stress suggest that stress response could differ based on gender difference. However, none of the investigations compared the male vs female visual attention under mental stress. Additionally, although there are two broad class of visual attention, namely focused and selective attention, most of the studies investigated either the focused or selective visual attention. Moreover, the stress inducer used in most of the studies could generate pain and discomfort as well. The generated pain and discomfort may affect visual attention differently than just mental stress. This incompleteness and contradiction in previous research motivated us to carry out a full spectrum analysis of visual attention (focused and selective) under mental stress. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first time investigating the gender-wise visual attention (both focused and selective) performance under mental stress. We have used Rapid Serial Visual Processing (RSVP) to study the focused visual attention and Stroop task to study selective attention. We induced mental stress using the Montreal Imaging Stress Test (MIST). We also have used Electrodermal Activity Signal (EDA) and photoplethysmogram (PPG), a more robust method to study emotion, to study the participants' mental stress condition. We observed that focused attention gets better after mental stress induction (Median = 82.94 and std = 13.19) than before the stress (Median = 71.26 and std = 16.72), t (30) = 3.02889 and $\rho =$ .00183. Selective visual attention too improves significantly after stress induction (Median = 1682.54 and std = 286.91) than before stress (Median = 2100.58 and std = 397.40), t(30) = 4.67151 and $\rho $ = <; .00001. Furthermore, for both focused and selective visual attention, we observed that male and female both gender group had performed significantly well after stress induction than before stress. However, the gender difference does not show any statistically significant result in visual attention (both focused and selective) performance after stress induction.

An index of vascular health is associated with white matter and hippocampal changes in individuals with mild cognitive impairment

Matched samples of expert and novice badminton players from 12 yrs (n = 12), 15 yrs (n = 14), 18 yrs (n = 8), and adult (n = 55) age groups were tested on a film task designed to simulate the perceptual demands of the sport of badminton. In the first half of the film task subjects were presented with varying degrees of temporal information both leading up to, and following, the opponent's contact with the shuttle and were required to predict the landing position of the shuttle from the information available. The expert group, unlike the novice group, showed a progression to earlier information-extraction as a function of age although it was only at the adult level that the anticipatory performance of the expert players significantly exceeded that of their novice counterparts. In the second half of the film task the display was manipulated by masking visibility to a number of potential sources of advance information. Under these occlusion conditions experts, irrespective of age, were found to extr...

Prospective studies examining associations between baseline sleep microarchitecture and future cognitive function recruited from small samples with predominantly short follow-up. This study examined sleep microarchitecture predictors of cognitive function (visual attention, processing speed, and executive function) after 8 years in community-dwelling men. Florey Adelaide Male Ageing Study participants (n=477) underwent home-based polysomnography (2010-2011), with 157 completing baseline (2007-2010) and follow-up (2018-2019) cognitive assessments (trail-making tests A [TMT-A] and B [TMT-B] and the standardized mini-mental state examination [SMMSE]). Whole-night F4-M1 sleep EEG recordings were processed following artifact exclusion, and quantitative EEG characteristics were obtained using validated algorithms. Associations between baseline sleep microarchitecture and future cognitive function (visual attention, processing speed, and executive function) were examined using linear regression models adjusted for baseline obstructive sleep apnoea, other risk factors, and cognition. The final sample included men aged (mean [SD]) 58.9 (8.9) years at baseline, overweight (BMI 28.5 [4.2] kg/m2), and well educated (75.2% ≥Bachelor, Certificate, or Trade), with majorly normal baseline cognition. Median (IQR) follow-up was 8.3 (7.9, 8.6) years. In adjusted analyses, NREM and REM sleep EEG spectral power was not associated with TMT-A, TMT-B, or SMMSE performance (all p>0.05). A significant association of higher N3 sleep fast spindle density with worse TMT-B performance (B=1.06, 95% CI [0.13, 2.00], p=0.026) did not persist following adjustment for baseline TMT-B performance. In this sample of community-dwelling men, sleep microarchitecture was not independently associated with visual attention, processing speed, or executive function after 8 years.

Action Video Games Make Dyslexic Children Read Better

Executive function and visual attention have been reported as important for sport performance in high-pressure situations, yet the interaction between these factors is not fully understood despite joint theoretical links to Attentional Control Theory-Sport. Specifically, whether visual attention (i.e., quiet eye, search rate, and fixations to key locations) mediates the relationship between executive function (i.e., shifting, inhibition, and updating) and soccer penalty performance under pressure is still unknown. An experimental between-subjects design with random assignment to low- and high-pressure conditions was used. Ninety-five participants (Mage = 25.07, SDage = 7.50 years, 58 males) with a range of training and competitive soccer experience (Myears = 6.09, SDyears = 7.82), completed measures of situational stress, physical activity, athletic expertise, and tasks of executive function, before completing a soccer penalty task while visual attention was recorded via a mobile eye-tracker. Between-subjects ANCOVA showed no significant differences between the pressure conditions in visual attention or soccer penalty performance, so subsequent analyses were collapsed across all participants. Mediation revealed that the effect of inhibition on soccer penalty performance was significantly mediated by quiet eye duration, search rate, and the number of fixations toward the goal. Also, the effect of updating on soccer penalty performance was significantly mediated by quiet eye duration and location, and the number of fixations toward the goal. These results are the first to suggest that executive function (inhibition and updating) and visual attention (quiet eye duration and location, fixations toward the goal, and search rate) combine to enhance soccer penalty performance.