A recent study suggests that the visual temporal resolution of elite athletes and professional gamers may be higher than average. If you’ve ever wondered why your tennis opponent always seems to outplay you, it appears that it might not just be a matter of physical fitness.
The research found that some individuals are actually capable of seeing more images per second than others, which means they are naturally better at detecting and tracking fast-moving objects, such as a tennis ball.
The brain’s ability to distinguish the speed of different visual signals is called temporal resolution, which affects how quickly we respond to changes in our environment. Previous studies have shown that animals with high visual temporal resolution are often species with fast-paced lifestyles, like predators. Studies on humans indicate that this trait tends to weaken with age and temporarily decrease after intense physical activity. However, the extent of differences among individuals of similar age groups is not yet clear.
One method of measuring this trait is to determine when a test subject can no longer perceive a flashing light and instead perceives it as static. PhD student Clinton Haarlem and his colleagues at Trinity College Dublin tested 80 men and women aged between 18 and 35, revealing significant differences in the subjects’ thresholds.
Published on April 1 in “PLOS One,” the study found that some participants reported the light source as static when it was actually flashing about 35 times per second, while others were able to perceive over 60 flashes per second.
This still falls far behind the temporal resolution of a peregrine falcon, which can process about 100 frames of visual imagery per second.
Haarlem mentioned, “We believe that those who see flashes at a higher rate are essentially able to gain more visual information within each time frame compared to those on the lower end of visual resolution.”
Supervised by Trinity College Dublin neurobiologist Professor Kevin Mitchell, he stated, “Since we only have access to our own subjective experiences, we may naively expect others to perceive the world in the same way as we do. This research describes such a difference. Some people do indeed perceive the world at a faster pace than others.”
The study also found that over time, individuals’ visual temporal resolution seems to remain relatively stable, with almost no differences between men and women.
Although it is not yet clear how these variations affect our daily lives, Haarlem suspects that the visual temporal resolution of elite athletes and professional gamers may be higher than average.
“We believe that in high-speed scenarios, individuals may need to track or follow fast-moving objects (such as in ball sports) or perceive individual differences in speed in rapidly changing visual scenes (such as in competitive gaming),” he said. “Before they pick up a racket to hit a tennis ball or grab a controller to immerse themselves in a fantasy world online (playing e-sports games), they may already have an edge over others.”
An important question is the trainability of this trait. While people’s reaction times can be improved through practice, it is also related to how long it takes for the brain’s visual perception to react to something.
Haarlem added, “At present, we still have limited understanding of where these differences come from and what they are related to. It may be related to our eyes or to how the brain filters information.”