Seeing The Net
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Poltavsky and Biberdorf’s 2014 study was one of the first of it’s kind to reveal the importance of visual processing in relation to in-game performance. Goal scoring, game points, and the number of penalties a player received were all able to be predicted by assessing the athletes’ cognitive abilities.
In the study, thirty-eight student athletes from the University of North Dakota Division 1 Men’s (19) and Women’s (19) hockey teams participated; 24 of whom were forwards, and 14 of whom were defensemen. The researchers used a visual processing assessment tool, the Nike SPARQ Sensory Training System (Nike SST), as a mean of measuring each athlete’s visual capacities.
For one, the studied showed a direct correlation in goal scoring amongst participants. Goal scoring correlated with a faster reaction time to visual stimuli, a better visual memory and visual discrimination (the ability to detect differences in shapes and objects). In fact, 69% of variance in the goals made by forwards in this study could be predicted by these cognitive abilities. Thus, the faster and better an athlete could react to moving shapes and objectives, the more often he scored goals.
Game points were no different either. Better discrimination among competing visual stimuli and the ability to inhibit non-target responses correlated with a greater number of game points (Poltavsky & Biberdorf, 2014).
The study also provided findings on cognitive abilities and penalty minutes per game. The average reaction time and depth perception mean response time correlated with average number of penalty minutes per game. In so, game points, goal scoring and penalty minutes were all predicted by specific cognitive abilities.
But, when the researchers examined each athletes’ eye-hand coordination and dynamic visual acuity (DVA), they found no significant association with goal scoring or average number of game points.
Ice hockey is a sport in which players can reach up to 30 miles per hour in bursts on the ice. Cognitive abilities such as the ability to read offensive and defensive play patterns is pivotal skill to hone in ice hockey (Martell & Vickers, 2014). Yet, before Poltvasky and Biberdorf’s study, the relationship between visual processing to in-game performance statistics was inconsistent in findings. Thus, the findings in the study provide integral evidence of the importance of visual processing in the ice hockey space.
Importantly, the Athletic Intelligence Quotient (AIQ) is a tool that measures these very same cognitive abilities. With four subsets of visual special processing, the AIQ can help better help predict player performance. As further showed by Poltavsky and Biberdorf (2014), visual spatial processing can play a vital role in player performance on the ice. The ability for an athlete to mentally organize visual information and assess what play to make is crucial to success.
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