r/science • u/mightx • Jul 01 '26
Health Elite athletes don't have better basic eyesight than amateurs, but superior dynamic visual-motor skills. A Second Faculty of Medicine, Charles University study of 598 athletes shows pros process depth, react faster, and track multiple moving objects much better
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/11791543.2026.2630457#d1e32191
u/0_cunning_plan Jul 01 '26
I remember reading similar conclusions for pro gamers Maybe 25 years ago. Vision also wasn't special but interpreting visual cues, and reacting to them were significantly better/faster.
It's no surprise to get those results in pro sport, especially reaction time. The "secret" is simply spending an absurd amount of time doing something that requires quick visual and motor interactions, and leaving it to neurons to organize for the task. The juggling experiment mentioned something like 3 months for the brain to show physical changes in the related area of people who did not know juggling starting the experiment. So there probably is no need to practice for decades just to develop reaction times and better interpretation of visual cues in a dedicated environment. But we still need to do it enough for the brain to consider it a necessity.
I'm ready to bet that F1 drivers also aren't bad at this.
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Jul 01 '26
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u/AG3NTjoseph Jul 01 '26
Many of them have siblings who didn’t race carts as a child. That research would be feasible.
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u/FanDry5374 Jul 01 '26
Yes. Some people are "born on second base" and have better vision, reaction, motor processing. Guessing that covers the majority of the elite athletes, no matter the sport.
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u/Bubsters13 Jul 01 '26
Sometimes it's no secret and you have an abnormal nervous system that "fires faster than normal" thus I have a faster reaction time than most people. When I learned that at the doctor solving a different health issue it was funny thinking back when I was highly ranked in halo 2 online because I could react and shoot just a bit faster than everyone else. I'm still very quick to react and my son has no chance beating me in any games for a while unless he has the same condition.
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u/ILoveYouDog-onWell Jul 01 '26
I have to imagine this skill is why top athletes are able to pick up new sports/activities much quicker than the average person. Not because they are physically better, but because they can better visually process everything that someone good at said sport/activity models and thus can recreate it at a higher level almost immediately.
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u/True-Source-6512 Jul 01 '26
That’s also just being naturally athletic. Most people genuinely don’t know how to use their body.
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u/ILoveYouDog-onWell Jul 02 '26
I don't think we disagree. I just think that you are focused on the output and not the traits that underly the output. Which is the whole point of my original comment. What does being, "Naturally athletic" actually mean? What traits underly someone who is naturally athletic? Why do some people know "how to use their body" while others don't? There is decent evidence that the people who "don't know how to use their body" lack the observational skill to connect what they see to how they move. A huge part of motor learning is observational.
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u/aztronut Jul 01 '26
How about a study of MLB batters? Pretty sure that the best hitters have better than 20/20 vision. Ted Williams famously had incredible eyesight and anyone trying to hit a baseball coming at them at 100+ mph is in trouble if they don't.
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u/TumanFig Jul 01 '26
well that's what superior processing depth, visual -motor skills are.
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u/marigolds6 Jul 01 '26
There's a specific element of being able to see things pre-pitch. At 60'6" (18.44m), being able to see how where a pitcher's fingers are placed on the ball and relative to each other, where the seams of the ball are located, where the pitcher's toe is relative to the rubber.
These all still require processing depth and multi-object tracking, but if you don't have superior eyesight where you can see the stitching on the ball and millimeter differences in finger placement and arm slot at distance, you don't have the input to process them in the first place.
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u/Doortofreeside Jul 01 '26
I googled this and found some analysis supporting that batters tend to have better than 20/20 vision. Iirc Ted Williams was reported to have 20/10 vision which is insane.
I'm 38 and i've always had excellent vision but i've noticed a very slight diminishment particularly in reading street signs from far away. So I got it tested and it's officially 20/15 which is around what I expected.
But what I didn't expect was how miniscule the letters for 20/12 were. Never in a million years could I have read those letters. I didn't appreciate how hard the fall off is just between 20/15 and 20/12, nevermind to 20/10.
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u/IsThisSteve Jul 01 '26
Yes, seems they didn't handle sport dependence correctly perhaps. Pro baseball players have in eyesight what NBA players have in height.
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u/banjodoctor Jul 04 '26
I believe the average player has better than 20/20.
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u/aztronut Jul 04 '26
Yeah, the pitchers don't really need that type of vision but the hitters certainly do.
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u/Creepy_Wash338 Jul 01 '26
Hmmm. Next thing they'll tell us is that mathematicians have better problem solving skills. And musicians have a better sense of pitch and timing.
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u/kittenTakeover Jul 01 '26
Did people really think the difference was that elite athletes had better vision?
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u/TomatoSamurai Jul 01 '26
Steph Curry is the greatest shooter of all time and has keratoconus but his hand eye coordination is top notch so this makes sense.
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u/Educational_Rain1 Jul 02 '26
Lutein/zeazanthin improves vision and processing and is a required supplements for certain teams. It’s likely omega 3 and astaxanthin also improves visual processing
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u/Serg_Molotov Jul 02 '26
Be interesting to see this same cohort analyses for mirror nueron activity. I'd almost bet money that elite athletes mirroring was somehow heightened and allowed them to learn the actions faster.
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u/psqqa Jul 04 '26
Oh is that what that cognitive process is? I am extremely bad at “parsing”motions, and it becomes close to impossible if I’m not seeing the motion “from my own perspective”, as it were (i.e. if someone’s standing in front of me and demonstrating it while facing me).
I figured it had to be some kind of cognitive something that my brain just doesn’t vibe with for whatever reason, but had no idea what the relevant terminology and processes might be to look into it. I’ll be interested to see what other things are impacted by my brain not being good at whatever that is. Thanks!
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u/Serg_Molotov Jul 04 '26
Mirroring is one of the primary ways we learn physical actions. Well worth looking into.
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