Limballe Annabelle, Kulpa Richard, Verhulst Eulalie, Ledouit Simon, Bennett Simon J
Univ Rennes, Inria, M2S, Rennes, France.
School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, United Kingdom.
Front Sports Act Living. 2024 Dec 24;6:1430719. doi: 10.3389/fspor.2024.1430719. eCollection 2024.
It is essential in combat sports such as boxing for athletes to perceive the relevant visual information that enables them to anticipate and respond to their opponent's attacking and defensive moves. Here, we used virtual reality (VR), which enables standardization and reproducibility while maintaining perception-action coupling, to assess the influence of a gaze-contingent blur on the visual processes that underpin these boxing behaviours. Eleven elite French boxers were placed in an immersive and adaptive first-person VR environment where they had to avoid by dodging one or two punches, and then counterattack to strike their opponent. The VR boxing task was performed in a central blur, peripheral blur and control condition. The results showed that elite boxers outcome performance was resilient to blur, irrespective of its location in the visual field. However, there was an effect of blur on the eye gaze data, with participants spending less time looking at the left hand and plexus, and more time looking at the head and areas other than the boxer, in the peripheral blur condition. Overall, then, our study contributes to growing evidence that performance in dynamic interceptive sports can be maintained when the visual stimulus is artificially blurred. In future work, it will be relevant to consider whether VR training with a gaze-contingent blur can facilitate learning, transfer, and/or reintroduction after injury, to a real boxing situation.
在拳击等格斗运动中，运动员感知相关视觉信息以预测对手的攻防动作并做出反应至关重要。在此，我们使用虚拟现实（VR）技术，其在保持感知 - 动作耦合的同时能够实现标准化和可重复性，以评估注视相关模糊对支撑这些拳击行为的视觉过程的影响。11名法国精英拳击手被置于沉浸式自适应第一人称VR环境中，在该环境中他们必须通过躲避一拳或两拳来避免被击中，然后反击对手。VR拳击任务在中央模糊、周边模糊和对照条件下进行。结果表明，精英拳击手的表现对模糊具有弹性，无论模糊出现在视野的哪个位置。然而，模糊对眼睛注视数据有影响，在周边模糊条件下，参与者看左手和神经丛的时间减少，而看头部和拳击手以外区域的时间增加。总体而言，我们的研究进一步证明，当视觉刺激被人为模糊时，动态拦截运动的表现仍可维持。在未来的研究中，考虑带有注视相关模糊的VR训练是否能促进学习、迁移和/或受伤后重新融入真实拳击场景将具有重要意义。
