Visio-spatial skills in athletes: comparison of rugby players and non-athletes

BackgroundResearch pertaining to the superiority of athletes' visio-spatial expertise when compared to non-athletes is conflicting. This discrepancy may arise due to a superiority in athletes in only specific visio-spatial skills (VSS) and not all aspects of vision.AimsThe aim of this study was to discern whether rugby players have superior VSS/expertise in comparison to non-athletes, when comparing six visual skills (accommodation facility, saccadic eye movement, speed of recognition, peripheral awareness, visual memory and hand-eye coordination).MethodsThe participants underwent an optometric assessment, after which the VSS components of non-athletes and premier league rugby players were assessed by using six different existing tests namely; the Hart Near Far Rock, saccadic eye movement, evasion, accumulator, flash memory and ball wall toss tests.ResultsA statistically significant (p <= .05) difference existed between rugby players and non-athletes for five out of the six tests. Conversely, no real evidence is shown that visual memory differs between rugby players and non- athletes (p=.599).ConclusionThis study found that rugby players have an enhanced accommodation facility, saccadic eye movements, speed of recognition, peripheral awareness and hand-eye coordination, but not visual memory, when compared to non-athletes. These findings of a superiority of rugby players in specific VSS have broad implications for theories of sport vision, how best to select tests and in the development of sport-specific VSS testing batteries.