Assessment of Visual Information Processing Ability in Elite Racket Sport Players

The present study aimed to investigate the abilities of visual information processing in racket sport players, and to compare the differences with their peers. Fifty-four male college-aged athletes were recruited and divided into two racket sport groups, including table tennis (TT, n = 22) and badminton (BT, n = 32) groups. Additionally, 22 healthy college students without regular physical activities were randomly selected and served as control subjects. The covert orienting of visuo-spatial attention tasks was used to evaluate the abilities of visual information processing. The data including the reaction time (RT) and response error rate (RER) were recorded and analyzed. Results showed that the athletes in TT and BT groups performed significantly better than the control subjects in the reaction time. In addition, RT of upper limbs, lower limbs, dominant side and non-dominant side was significantly different between the groups, and RT of upper limbs was quicker than that of lower limbs in both groups. Except control group, the RT of dominant side was quicker than that of non-dominant side. In conclusion, elite racket sport players had quicker RT than their peers, but those players seemed not to perform better in RER. It is recommended to recruit more athletes participating in different sports to acquire further information on sport-specific characteristics of visual information processing. Furthermore, it is undisputable for the selection of efficient talent athletes to establish the database of visual information processing abilities in different kinds of sports.