Quiet Eye Research Paper

Introduction
The ‘quiet eye’ is defined as the final fixation on a single target during the preparation phase, before movement. Furthermore, the quiet eye has been identified as the link between visual and limb movement, in aiming tasks such as basketball free-throws and golf putting, as well as tracking tasks, such as skeet shooting. In addition, gaze control has been identified as essential in successful and accurate performance of these motor tasks.

The importance of gaze control was first highlighted by Vickers (1992), who showed a clear difference in how proficient expert golf putters were with their gaze control compared novices. Experts had a much steadier gaze and their final fixation or quiet eye, was far steadier on the back of the ball prior to movement, compared to novice golf putters, whose gaze controls were erratic and did not fixate on a target for long before movement.

It is suggested that the quiet eye denotes a vital period of cognitive processing in which variables such as force, direction and velocity are optimized and programmed. From this, many studies in a large array of different sports have attempted to train the quiet eye and observe the effect on performance (for a review; see Mann et al., (2007))

In addition, the quiet-eye has been claimed to be a valuable psychological technique for elite level performers that should be included as part of a warm-up routine shortly before performance is due to take place. This is because of the protective effect that quiet-eye training has against anxiety in high pressured situations. Research has shown that anxiety reduces quiet eye duration and so the hypothesis is that quiet-eye training can help protect performance in high-pressured