google "rapid eye desensitization therapy" ...i have a feeling that they may be related as there is a great deal of eye movement and eye movement patterns in panic and pstd incidents. The point of the therapy is to being these eye movements under control and to calm them which have theraputic effects and often after the person is trained in as little as 15 minutes. You can think of it as reverse engineering or conditioning.

google "rapid eye desensitization therapy" ...i have a feeling that they may be related as there is a great deal of eye movement and eye movement patterns in panic and pstd incidents. The point of the therapy is to being these eye movements under control and to calm them which have theraputic effects and often after the person is trained in as little as 15 minutes. You can think of it as reverse engineering or conditioning.

I’ve very interested to learn more about it. I didn’t realize it had a name. This is also an essential skill for observing things in the natural world as many artists have and some still do. We’ve called it the difference between looking and seeing. I’ve used it as a cornerstone of teaching drawing and painting for the last 50 years and it’s reliably effective. My understanding has been that you need to wait-out the automatic predictive memory-based contributions to your perception and learn how to override the delivered categories. It forces re-examination, and almost anything you look at in that way will suddenly appear to be radically different and much more interesting. The skill is in the same big family of good advice that if you want to learn something the first thing you need to do is stop talking.

I’m working on the ‘quiet-eye’ skill now for my own recovery from brain injury and recommending it as a therapeutic exercise for others in the same boat; as one way of tuning down the runaway sensory input that is so disorientating and problematic for us. ‘Quiet eye’ is a so much more polite way of saying ‘shut up and pay attention’

I’m looking forward to a better understanding of this topic.

excellent quick summary:) quiet eye is also a big problem with all digital media which make eyes unquiet and thus make it difficult to get to the perception and reflection you talk about; ignored by the digital media purveyors but something addressed a little in the book The Shallows" (forgot the auithor). FYI, google biofeedback as there are now a good many pc based programs for training and recovery from various brain injuries and brain-based and trauma related problems and exercises/dynamic feedback to help someone learn to control heart rate, anxiety levels (galvanic skin response levels) and so on.

Thanks for the responses. Yes it is indeed an interesting topic. The current definition ...ie final fixation before action execution seems restrictive in some ways. The QE period is thought to reflect higher/ more levels of cognitive processing but if it is the final look before throwing a free throw them surely all the higher/ cognitive processing would have happened earlier than the final fixation on a target no? Thanks for the search suggestions too!

I do a lot of sports vision work. Generally in the area of visualization and visual imagery we find that internal verbalization is the devil. The person who goes up there saying to themselves, "Don't do X" will invariably do X. So to get a person out of using some internal verbalization I get them into doing a routine, very repetitive (think of shooting a free throw or getting into the batters box or getting ready to receive a serve in tennis). This involves a place to look with the eyes. I start with many high level basketball players and ask them, "Where do you look when you shoot a free throw?" and I'm amazed at how many have no answer. So getting the person into a visual routine gets them into the present tense, into the here and now.

I also teach about taking in a large amount of visual space and looking softly. We do lots of look hard and look soft and they learn to look with ease. During the few seconds before action they preview the successful act they are about to perform. Jack Nicklaus called this, "Going to the movies before every shot." That's from his Golf My Way. At any rate, I think that Joan Vickers is getting to same place and she just named it the quiet eye. I go after much more in my sport specific vision therapy. Hope that helps fill in some of the possible mechanisms. There is a LOT here.

That's an interesting supposition. The literature has focused on quantifying an overt feature rather than exploring the underlying processes. Could these include imagery for example? What is the role of cognitive strategies in pre-performance routines on QE? These cognitions and metacognitions precede the QE period-how do they influence it? More questions than answers but that's the nature of research.

Some interesting comments and thoughts in this feed. We have been considering some of this down in Exeter recently...

http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Abstract/publishahead/Quiet_Eye_and_Choking___Online_Control_Breaks_Down.98380.aspx

Interesting that we may have a propensity for confirmation bias -understandable as we make definitive predictions by establishing hypotheses. So at present we have some substantial evidence that in controlled conditions (e.g., straight line putting) accurate motor skill performance is accompanied by QE. Nevertheless, studies to date have not adequately explained the possible underlying processes. And findings on the retention of QE effects are equivocal. For example, Vine et al. (2011) stated that "However, in contrast to the predictions of hypothesis 1, although the QE-trained group displayed longer mean QE durations than the Control group (2817 vs. 2203 ms) during the retention test, this difference was not statistically significant." So I still have questions (as Mark Campbell as posed) about the underlying processes, and furthermore, I have questions on the limited type of skills in which QE occurs and finally, is QE trainable?

Thanks to the good work of Vine et al. and hopefully more answers will emerge, but we have to start with more questions.

The quiet eye has been isolated in quite a few sport tasks (golf putting, basketball free throw, basketball field shooting, table tennis, billiards, rifle, pistol, shot gun shooting, volleyball serve reception, darts, ice hockey goaltending, ice hockey tactics, soccer goaltending, soccer penalty shot, badminton, archery, baseball umpiring), as well as in dance (ballet), law enforcement (pistol under pressure), child development (children's throwing and catching) and surgery (laproscopic, knot tying, thyroidectomy) so it is quite a wide spread phenomenon.

You are right that the underlying processes are not understood. But some recent papers are beginning to isolate the shared cognitive and motor processes. Some of the most recent: Klostermann, A., Kredel, R., & Hossner, E.-J. (2013, February 11). The “Quiet Eye” and Motor Performance: Task Demands Matter!. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0031499

Wood, Vine, Wilson (2013). The impact of visual illusions on perception, action planning, and motor performance, Atten Percept Psychophys, DOI 10.3758/s13414-013-0489-y.

Horn, Okumura, Alexander, Gardin, & Sylvester (2012). Quiet eye duration is responsive to variability of practice and to the axis of target changes. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport. 83, Issue 2, June 2012, Pages 204-211

From Klostermann et al. "However, it is only under a high information-processing load that a longer QE duration is beneficial for throwing performance"

Is there any support that in real life (sport) situations, this is actual beneficial? Additionally, is there any support that training QE improves performance (or does it just correlate with performance)?

@Tadhg Which evidence do you refer to?

the evidence for training QE is equivocal and it requires more sophisticated longitudinal designs to demonstrate retention. It is also notable that the ecological validity of the studies eg straight line putting is limited. Until the processes are more clearly understood we should be cautious in advocating this strategy. my 2 cents worth.

Quiet eye training studies are included in Contributions by myself, as well as Wilson, Vine, Wood, Causer and others - all on Research Gate. Having done quiet eye training for many years, the performer has a perceptual/cognitive breakthrough caused by a new awareness of their own quiet eye's characterstics compared to an expert. The 5 characteristics are optimal location, onset, offset, duration and most important onset prior to final critical movement. Since the gaze and motor data is video based the performer can see the difference between their own, often chaotic gaze control and the elegant gaze and attention of experts. Their new understanding of what consitutes expert performance contributes to changes in their QE and significant improvements in motor performance.

It may take time for the learning to become permanent - nonone has looked at this, hence I agree with the comment that longitudinal studies need to be done.

But there must be something permanent in the phenomenon as a number of sports now include quiet eye training in their curricula , eg. golf putting. And a growing number of professional instructors in golf and other sports now make quiet eye training sessions available. So good signs from the field.

I agree with Joan that the concept of QE training must have 'some legs' given the evidence emerging from wide and varied research, and also the positive comments coming from the field.

In my opinion whether QE training induces a perfromance advantage is a less important question than the question, how or why does it have an effect!?. Research is revealing a number of potential Psychological and Phsyiological mechanisms, but as yet no definitive finding.

I agree with comments above about the need to longitudinal research (perhaps even case studies) but this has proven to be very difficult here in Exeter... with issues of retention and commitment from participants.

The search goes on!!

I agree with the comments posted here. I think that the evolution of the QE concept from studies examining expert/novice differences and successful/unsuccessful shots meant that the naturally occurring question of this early work was “What if we train the eye-movements of performers? Will novices get better? Will experts show resilience under pressure?” As we have seen we can train the eye movements of performers in lots of tasks and this does induce some performance advantages for novices, experts and also in pressurised environments. This early focus on the practicality of the QE meant that for a short time the specific attentional processes behind its effectiveness were neglected a little – that is until quite recently.

I think the question originally posted reflects perfectly where we are with QE concept. Great discussion and comments btw!

Good point on the evolution of QE. The studies showing training effects are limited and are not linked to "resilience" as far as I am aware. The search goes on but I am reminded of a note of caution sounded over two decades ago by Ron Smith who suggested then that we are in an "age of accountability." So interest in QE by both professional instructors and by sport organisations is not a metric I would like to rely on to establish the veracity of QE training. NLP for one is widespread across these settings and it does not stand up to credibility, so perhaps the jury is still out on QE too.

Smith, R.E. (1989). Applied sport psychology in the age of accountability. Journal

of Applied Sport Psychology, 1, 166-180.

Tadhg, while I welcome your healthy scepticism, I have to disagree with the contention that the QE training literature is limited. Positive findings have emerged from a number of different sports tasks, from police fire arms tasks, from children with motor coordination disorder, from surgeons performing laparoscopy and recently from military marksmen (plus many more). These studies have varied in design in terms of the duration of training, the delay until retention and the types of transfer (pressure etc.). A recent study which trained the gaze behaviours of surgeons perfoming laparoscopic tasks included a one month retention. The vast majority of these studies have supported QE training as a means to expedite motor learning...

I recently wrote a review paper on this topic (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17461391.2012.683815)

This may now be somewhat dated, there are many more supportive findings that have emerged since this paper, nonetheless it highlights our teams thoughts on this topic.

This is an excellent discussion, lets keep it going! Perhaps we can arrange a gathering or symposia of sorts to discuss further!?

Thanks for the citation which I will get to ASAP. Great discourse which the field needs more of in other domains too.

While more evidence is likely to have been discovered since the end of this thread to me it is important to not simply group experts and novices into simple categories assuming they are "all the same." A variable spread indicates differences within groups, and THAT is where much can be found. i.e. what are the differences between the top experts and bottom and vice versa for the novices?

While group mean research models are simple and elegant in many respects this kind of grouping smooths over the outliers in each camp... Adding intra-individual exploration combined with a multitude of variables (type of sport, visual/optical issues, cognitive-perceptual abilities, EEG pre/during/post action, and fMRI to name name a few) these variables could impact and further explain HOW QE differs  via the underlying neural/visual architecture.. rather than just a descriptive (though very useful) comparison.