The role of peripheral vision in sports and everyday life
Christian Vater, André Klostermann, Ralf Kredel, Ernst-Joachim Hossner · 2019
This chapter examines the role of peripheral vision in the context of the overall topic of decision making and anticipation in sports. It discusses the capabilities of the visual system before linking these capabilities to the attentional system. The chapter provides the reader with an overview of empirical findings on the influence of peripheral vision on cognitive and motor performance, both in everyday life and in sports. It explores heuristic linking the visual and attentional systems. The importance of measuring both the location of gaze and the location of attention is emphasised when striving for broader insights into visual and attentional processing. The use of peripheral vision has been investigated in a variety of domains. The chapter reviews research involving domains in which peripheral vision has been examined during increasingly complex tasks that are potentially relevant to sports, namely, controlling gait and posture, grasping and catching, and driving a car.