An Ecological Approach to Gaze Behaviour in Sport

This chapter suggests that the primary function of visual search in team sport contexts is to gather information for guiding actions relative to teammates, opponents, interpersonal spaces and distances, and objects in the environment. For instance, during a search process conducted by elite performers, a goalkeeper gathers information from the penalty taker’s body (i.e., the eyes, torso, and legs) and the ball location when coordinating the timing of when and where to move in the penalty kick situation. Similarly, in other team sports, point guards in basketball, quarterbacks in American football, and midfielders in football (soccer) are situated in dynamic performance contexts that require these athletes to actively search for information to act adaptively. From an ecological perspective, gaze behaviour reflects one means of gathering optic information, and as such, active search also relies heavily on head and body movements. Thus, an ecological approach emphasises the study of gaze behaviour in sport to capture how athletes realise active exploratory actions to perform in sport settings. This chapter outlines an active search account of sport expertise, firstly providing an overview of an ecological approach before reflecting on findings from experiments, which have aimed to understand differences in gaze behaviour of video-based and performance (in situ) settings. The chapter concludes by focusing on implications of evidence that points to the functional role of variability in gaze behaviour of elite athletes, considered alongside avenues for future research.