Complex Visual Decisions and Reaction Time

Dr. Dan Laby is probably one of the best sports vision scientists in the world. Anybody that's in that business will tell you he is the pioneer in sports vision. 

He found that when they tested elite athletes and non-trained people on simple visual decisions, they all had the same reaction time. When I say simple visual decisions, it just means “red light, green light, stop, go.” When it was very obvious – “red light, stop, green light, go,” there was no perceived difference in reaction time.

In the instances of complex visual decisions, meaning becoming acutely aware of one visual stimulus while ignoring the other stimuli, trained athletes were 35 percent faster and 31 percent more accurate in decision making than non-athletes. It is in their memory and their brains fill in a lot of data points, leaving more focus for things that are important to the success of the shot. 

What was found is in complex decisions, meaning you have to focus on one stimulus while ignoring other movement stimuli in the picture, athletes that were trained to focus while not becoming visually aware of anything else but that one stimulus, they were 35 percent faster and 31 percent more accurate in their decision making because the brain was filling in things that they didn't have to be concerned with. That's reaction time. That's true reaction time.

Their ability to anticipate becomes faster and better with practice. This is because they've seen it so many times that they actually need fewer visual cues to predict more precisely what is coming next.

For example, when you've broken 100 right-to-left chandelles at 50 yards, you begin to see the line becoming more straight and less curved. When you've broken 5,000 from the left and 5,000 from the right, what you perceive is totally different than after 100. It happens so much faster because when you see the target, your brain has seen it so many times, it already knows what it's going to take to break the target.

The real paradox is that the more memory you have of breaking the target, the less you have to see on the target to hit it every time because the brain fills in the necessary data to break the target without you having to actually see it.

What the brain fills in is really where your skill is, allowing the trained athlete to perceive so many fewer things, but still perform at higher and higher levels. As you perform at higher and higher levels, the less you have to see to break the target.

A person with a thousand hours of shooting cannot perceive what a person with 100,000 hours of shooting because their brains have not suspended so much of what is not necessary for performance at higher and higher levels. What we perceive, the brain fills in automatically.

 This is an adapted excerpt from the February 2025 Coaching Hour podcast. You can hear it in full - along with more than 20 years of archives in audio and written form - with your Knowledge Vault membership.