Department of Physical Education, Southeast University, Nanjing, China.
Southeast university research institute of sports science, Nanjing, China.
PeerJ. 2023 Oct 19;11:e16286. doi: 10.7717/peerj.16286. eCollection 2023.
Visual attention plays a crucial role in daily living and in sports, affecting an athlete's performance and thus, potentially, the outcome of a match. However, studies assessing the association between the level of sports expertise and visual attention have yielded mixed results. This study was conducted to examine whether visual attention could be developed with increased sports expertise, and whether visual attention differed between male athletes and female athletes.
A total of 128 participants were included in this study: 64 first-level national soccer athletes recruited from college soccer teams (considered elite athletes; 32 men and 32 women with similar soccer performance requirements and training experience), and 64 physical education college students with limited soccer experience (considered novice athletes; 32 men and 32 women with matched soccer experience). To assess visual attention, we used a multiple object tracking (MOT) task with four targets among a total of 10 objects moving at a fixed speed of 10°/s in random directions across a computer monitor screen. Tracking accuracy on the MOT task was calculated for each participant as the proportion of correctly selected targets. A univariate analysis of variance was performed, with group (expert, novice) and sex (male, female) as independent variables, and tracking accuracy on the MOT task as the dependent variable to assess whether sports expertise or sex influenced visual attention. Simple effects tests followed by comparisons with Bonferroni corrections were used, and effect size calculations were performed using Cohen's statistic.
Tracking accuracy on the MOT task was significantly affected by sports expertise ( = 91.732, < 0.001, = 0.425), with accuracy among expert soccer athletes superior to that among novice soccer athletes. Moreover, a statistically significant interaction between sports expertise and sex was detected ( = 7.046, = 0.009, = 0.054). Better tracking performance was observed for male soccer players (mean [SD], 0.39 [0.12]) than for female soccer players (mean [SD], 0.27 [0.08]); < 0.01; =1.17; = 0.51) but only in the novice group. No significant sex difference was detected in tracking performance between elite male soccer athletes (mean [SD], 0.51 [0.09]) and elite female soccer athletes (mean [SD], 0.49 [0.11]).
These findings confirm previous results indicating that long-term extensive sports training develops visual attention as assessed by MOT performance and extend previous findings to include soccer athletes. The findings of a sex difference in visual attention among novice soccer players but not among elite soccer athletes who had similar performance requirements and training experience suggest that long-term extensive training may minimize the sex difference in visual attention.
视觉注意力在日常生活和体育运动中起着至关重要的作用，影响着运动员的表现，从而可能影响比赛的结果。然而，评估运动专业水平与视觉注意力之间关联的研究结果不一。本研究旨在检验视觉注意力是否可以随着运动专业水平的提高而发展，以及男性运动员和女性运动员之间的视觉注意力是否存在差异。
本研究共纳入 128 名参与者：64 名一级国家足球运动员（被认为是精英运动员，其中 32 名男性和 32 名女性，具有相似的足球表现要求和训练经验），从大学足球队招募；64 名具有有限足球经验的体育教育专业学生（被认为是新手运动员，其中 32 名男性和 32 名女性具有匹配的足球经验）。为了评估视觉注意力，我们使用了一个具有四个目标的多目标跟踪（MOT）任务，在计算机显示器屏幕上以 10°/s 的固定速度随机方向移动总共 10 个目标。每个参与者的 MOT 任务的跟踪准确性均计算为正确选择目标的比例。采用单变量方差分析，以组（专家、新手）和性别（男性、女性）为自变量，以 MOT 任务的跟踪准确性为因变量，以评估运动专业水平或性别是否影响视觉注意力。采用简单效应检验，随后进行 Bonferroni 校正比较，并采用 Cohen's 统计量进行效应大小计算。
MOT 任务的跟踪准确性受到运动专业水平的显著影响（ = 91.732， < 0.001， = 0.425），表现出专业足球运动员的准确性优于新手足球运动员。此外，还检测到运动专业水平和性别之间存在统计学上显著的交互作用（ = 7.046， = 0.009， = 0.054）。与女性足球运动员（均值 [标准差]，0.27 [0.08]）相比，男性足球运动员（均值 [标准差]，0.39 [0.12]）的跟踪表现更好（ ＜ 0.01； =1.17； = 0.51），但仅在新手组中。在精英男性足球运动员（均值 [标准差]，0.51 [0.09]）和精英女性足球运动员（均值 [标准差]，0.49 [0.11]）之间，未检测到跟踪表现的显著性别差异。
这些发现证实了先前的结果，即长期广泛的运动训练可以提高 MOT 表现评估的视觉注意力，并将先前的发现扩展到足球运动员。在新手足球运动员中存在视觉注意力的性别差异，但在具有相似表现要求和训练经验的精英足球运动员中则不存在这种差异，这表明长期广泛的训练可能会最小化视觉注意力的性别差异。
