The Quiet Eye

In order to appreciate what the quiet eye is (QE, Vickers, 1996, 2007) think about a sports situation you’ve been in when the outcome of a game depended on your ability to perform well in the dying seconds. Perhaps you had to make a free throw, sink a putt, stop a shot on goal, or perform in another situation where the stakes were high and you had to remain calm and perform at your best. The QE is a measure of your ability to maintain your visual focus and concentration even under the most challenging of conditions. The QE is recorded with a light mobile eye tracker coupled to an external motor camera that records the athlete’s movements as they perform in conditions similar to those found in the real world. The QE is defined as the final fixation or tracking gaze that is located on a specific location in the task space prior to a critical phase of the movement. An earlier and longer QE duration has been found to be a characteristic of elite performers in many sport, medical and other motor tasks. Theoretically, the QE represents the time needed to organize the neural networks underlying the control of the movement. QE training programs help learners adopt an expert`s focus sooner leading to significantly greater improvements in motor performance when compared to technical training programs. In my talk I go over the origins of the QE and QE training, stressing research work done lately that has advanced the QE to being a key characteristic of expertise in many fields.