Abstract
Visual skills in sport are considered relevant variables of athletic performance. However, data on the specific contribution of stereopsis—as the ability to perceive depth—in sport performance are still scarce and scattered in the literature. The aim of this review is therefore to take stock of the effects of stereopsis on the athletic performance, also looking at the training tools to improve visual abilities and potential differences in the visuomotor integration processes of professional and non-professional athletes. Dynamic stereopsis is mainly involved in catching or interceptive actions of ball sports, whereas strategic sports use different visual skills (peripheral and spatial vision) due to the sport-specific requirements. As expected, professional athletes show better visual skills as compared to non-professionals. However, both non-professional and professional athletes should train their visual skills by using sensory stations and light boards systems. Non-professional athletes use the visual inputs as the main method for programming motor gestures. In contrast, professional athletes integrate visual information with sport expertise, thus, they encode the match (or the athletic performance) through a more complex visuomotor integration system. Although studies on visual skills and stereopsis in sports still appear to be in their early stages, they show a large potential for both scientific knowledge and technical development.
Highlights
Visual skills in sport have emerged as relevant variables of athletic performance
We propose a model of visuomotor integration that differs between professional and non-professional athletes: professionals optimally integrate visual skills, including stereoptic perception, with motor gesture programming and sport expertise, even if the visual input still remains with motor gesture programming andon sport if the visual input stillaction remains a relevant afference
The aim of this review was to put together what is known about the potential role of stereopsis in athletic performance
Summary
Visual skills in sport have emerged as relevant variables of athletic performance. In the early 1980s, Stine et al showed that athletes had better visual abilities than non-athletes, and that, among athletes, there were differences between those with poorer and those with better visual skills. Public Health 2021, 18, 11281 catchers with low stereopsis decreased as the ball speed increased (athletes made more temporal errors), suggesting a relationship between high-level stereopsis and the ability to catch the ball This result was more recently confirmed by Mazyn et al (2004; 2007) [8,9]. Basketball players aged 11–13 showed remarkable visual abilities (three-dimensional vision, distance visual acuity, visual reaction time, etc.), comparable to adults or even higher than reference values [12]. It is not clear whether the best levels of visual abilities, such as stereopsis, are conditional to the best performance, or not. (a) integration among visual skills with optimal sport performances; (b) the approach for the evaluation of stereopsis in sport; (c) the comparisons between athletes and non-athletes; and (d) training strategies for the improvement of visual skills
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