Pay attention! A review of visual attentional expertise in sport

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to review current literature on visual attentional processes in the area of sport expertise. Based on recent findings in neuroscience, attention can be divided into four distinct sub-processes, all of which differ across individuals to varying extents: orienting attention, selective attention, divided attention, and sustained attention. These four sub-processes serve as a heuristic tool to categorize the presented studies. Then, a critical assessment of the merits and limitations of the discussed studies is provided. Following that, conceptual and methodological issues in the field of attention and sport will be discussed. Finally, new potential directions for further research in the field of attention processes and expertise will be presented with a link to other research topics (e.g., motivation, creativity) and disciplines (e.g., developmental psychology). The overall aim is to show that human movement science can use important insights from other branches of the discipline (e.g., social psychology) in order to test and optimize sports training programs. At the same time, though, it is hoped that the use of ecological and complex settings will, in future, enable further development of theoretical models from other disciplines, like general, or developmental psychology.

Keywords:

• orienting attention
• selective attention
• divided attention
• sustained attention
• inattentional blindness
• breadth of attention
• motivation
• creativity
• ERP

Acknowledgements

Special thanks go to Rouwen Cañal-Bruland, Philip Furley, Norbert Hagemann, and Heiko Maurer for many inspirational and insightful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.