Effects of attentional focus and cognitive load on novice dart throwing: Evidence from quiet eye duration and pupillary responses

Ayoub Asadi*, Mohammad Saeedpour-Parizi, Christopher Aiken, Rose Jahanbani, Davood Hoomanian, THOMAS SIMPSON, DAVID MARCHANT

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (journal)peer-review

11 Citations (Scopus)
21 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of attentional focus and cognitive-load on motor performance, quiet-eye-duration, and pupil dilation. 18 participants completed a dart throwing task under four conditions, internal or external focus with high or low cognitive-load. Cognitive-load was created by a secondary tone detection task. During each trial participants pupil size and eye movements were recorded along with accuracy data of the dart throw. Results revealed that decreased cognitive-load increased accuracy while high load increased pupil size (p's < 0.05). An external focus resulted in the greatest accuracy while an external focus with high cognitive-load resulted in the longest quiet-eye-durations (p's < 0.05). Based on these findings an increase in pupil size is related to greater cognitive-load but doesn't explain the improvement in task performance. Likewise, an external focus of attention improved performance but was not strongly related to quiet-eye-duration. Results are further discussed in the article.

Original languageEnglish
Article number103015
Pages (from-to)103015
JournalHuman Movement Science
Volume86
Early online date12 Oct 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2022

Keywords

  • focus of attention
  • Gaze control
  • pupillometry
  • Cognitive Load
  • Motor Control

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