Visual Search in Sport and Ergonomics: Its Relationship to Selective Attention and Performer Expertise

Visual search data has been frequently used to make direct implications about aspects of selective attention. In the first part of this article, the relationship between visual search and selective attention is examined to see what assumptions and limitations exist in making these implications. It is revealed that although much of the existing visual search research can be interpreted from within the selective attention notions of pertinence and context, measures of visual orientation alone, as provided by eye-movement recording, are inadequate solitary indicators of the allocation of attention. The capacity to make attentional shifts without eye movements, the distinction between looking and seeing, and the unknown role of information processed from the periphery of the retina in dynamic information pick-up emerge as essential limitations in the eye-movement recording approach to assessing selective attention. In the second part of the article, the extent to which visual search strategy, like selective attention, is mediated by the subject's level of task proficiency is examined by reviewing evidence from visual search analyses conducted within the applied settings of ergonomics and sport. It is revealed that experts and novices often systematically fixate upon different areas of a given display (implying differences in cue usage), although the evidence concerning differences in search rate (as indicative of processing load) is equivocal. Persistent failure to consider the assumptions and limitations within the methods used in applied visual research is highlighted, and some suggestions for future research direction are advanced.