Quiet Eye Training Improves Small Arms Maritime Marksmanship

Abstract

Quiet eye training—teaching task-specific gaze control—has been consistently shown to optimize the acquisition of motor skills. The present study aimed to examine the potential benefits of a quiet eye training intervention in a simulated maritime marksmanship task that involved shooting fast approaching moving targets with a decommissioned general-purpose machine gun. Twenty participants were randomly assigned to a quiet eye trained (QET) or technical trained (TT) group and completed 2 baseline, 20 training, and 2 retention trials on the moving-target task. Compared to their TT counterparts, the QET group displayed more effective gaze control (longer quiet eye durations and greater target locking) and more accurate performance (smaller radial error of both the initial shot and average of all shots) at retention. These findings highlight the potential for quiet eye training to be used to support the training of marksmanship skills in military settings.

• skill acquisition
• attention
• motor learning
• visuomotor control
• simulation

Notes

1 The reduction in performance (increase in radial error) after training for the control group was driven primarily by one participant who displayed a posttraining increase in initial error of 1,380.70 m. The lack of a significant improvement for the quiet eye group was also driven by the results of one participant who revealed an increase in initial shot error of 237.92 m.