THE INFLUENCE OF 2D AND 3D STIMULI ON VISUAL PERCEPTION AND DECISION MAKING IN LABORATORY SETTING

In volleyball, visual perception plays a crucial role on performance, enabling a quick recognition of ball’s trajectories, and allows for the accurate assessment of game situations and the targeted-oriented planning and execution of actions. However, it is unclear how the availability of depth information in different presentation formats (e.g. 2D vs 3D stimuli) in laboratory conditions can affect the perceptual strategies and performance of volleyball players (Presta et al., 2021). The study aims to scrutinize cognitive changes or alterations regarding athletes’ visual strategies.
Using a video-based visual occlusion paradigm, 32 volleyball players (novices = 19; advanced = 13, were shown 56 randomized volleyball serves (23/2D and 23/3D). Participants were asked to response as fast and accurate as possible. Reaction times and number of correct decisions were registered by keyboard entries (CMC; Heinen, 2010). Gaze behavior was scrutinized using SMI^® eye-tracking (120Hz).
A mixed 2 × 2 ANOVA revealed that both groups performed faster when 3D sequences ware presented F(1,29) = 127.679; p < .001. Regarding the response correctness, no significant differences was revealed (Chi² = 0,522, p > .05). At least, a mixed-ANOVA taking the mean of the total trial-fixations (e.g. visual strategies) as dependent variable showed no significant main [F(1,30) = 2.924; p = .098] or group [F(1,30) = 1.431; p = .241] effects.
Both groups responded significantly faster when 3D-sequences presented. To gain a deeper understanding of cognitive and attentional processes involved in visual search strategies, such as peripheral perception when observing empty spaces.