An Exploratory Investigation of the Effect of a Sports Vision Program on Grade 4 and 5 Female Netball Players’ Visual Skills

Dané Coetzee () and Elna de Waal
Additional contact information
Dané Coetzee: Physical Activity, Sport and Recreation (PhASRec), Focus Area, Faculty of Health Science, School of Human Movement Sciences, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, Potchefstroom 2531, South Africa
Elna de Waal: Physical Activity, Sport and Recreation (PhASRec), Focus Area, Faculty of Health Science, School of Human Movement Sciences, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, Potchefstroom 2531, South Africa

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 16, 1-17

Abstract: Vision is one of the most complex and dominant sensory systems necessary for information feedback from the environment. Few studies have already reported a positive effect of a sport vision program on elite sport teams’ visual skills; however, few studies have focused on the effect of sport vision programs on children’s visual skills. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the effect of a sports vision program on Grade 4 and 5 female netball players’ visual skills. Girls (N = 25) with a mean age of 10.08 years (SD = 0.65) formed part of this study. A pre-test–post-test design was followed with a retention test. The eight-week sports vision program was executed twice a week for 60 min on the experimental group ( n = 13). The Developmental Test of Visual–Motor Integration (VMI-4), the Wayne Saccadic Fixator (WSF) and the Developmental Eye Movement (DEM) test were used to evaluate the girls’ visual skills, hand–eye coordination, visual reaction time, peripheral vision and saccadic eye movements. No statistical differences were found between the two groups before starting with the sports vision program. After intervention, significant differences between the two groups were reported, with the experimental group performing better in hand–eye coordination ( p = 0.001) and reaction time ( p = 0.001). Results further indicated that the experimental group experienced significant improvements ( p ≤ 0.05) in motor coordination, hand–eye coordination, reaction speed and visual tracking after intervention with significant lasting effects ( p ≤ 0.05). The control group performed significantly worse in reaction time ( p = 0.01). A sports vision program can be recommended for Grade 4 and 5 female netball players to improve certain visual skills.

Keywords: depth perception; hand–eye coordination; netball; ocular motor control; sports vision; visual skills (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/16/9864/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/16/9864/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:16:p:9864-:d:885050

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().