Archers and pseudoneglect: Forte 2016 thesis

A master's thesis at Maynooth University compared 29 high-level Irish recurve archers with groups of non-archers on tests of pseudoneglect, the slight tendency almost everyone has to shift attention to the left and so to err towards the right. The two groups scored the same on general cognitive tests: estimated IQ around 111, a questionnaire on everyday lapses and a number and letter trail test.

In the first experiment, against 30 controls, the archers bisected lines on paper with smaller errors both to the left and to the right: the mean leftward error was 1.76 mm in the controls and 0.26 mm in the archers (F = 43.39, p < 0.001). Walking 20 times through a doorway only 2 cm wider than their body, the archers got through without touching an average of 19.55 times against 18.43, with fewer bumps on the right (0.38 against 1.33). In a computer visual search they were more accurate (target present: 28.8 correct out of 30 against 27.2) with the same response times for correct answers. In the cancellation tests there was a difference in only one of the two versions.

In the second experiment, with the same archers and another 30 controls, participants chose the centre of a line from five marks, either looking at it or from memory, with plain lines or with Müller-Lyer fins. There is no overall effect of group (p = 0.11) but there is an interaction between group and condition (p = 0.019): the difference between groups is significant only for plain lines viewed directly (p = 0.01), not for remembered ones (p = 0.41), and according to the text, in the archers the choices made from memory fell further to the left than those made by sight.

The archers needed at least 3 years of shooting and the Master Bowman classification of the British governing body, three scores of at least 1,191 out of 1,440 at record status events; all shoot recurve and were recruited from clubs across the island of Ireland, north and south. There were 25 men and 4 women with a mean age of 27.03. The controls in the first experiment (22 men and 8 women, mean age 25.6) and in the second (19 men and 11 women, mean age 24) had no archery experience and were recruited at the university and in the town. Testing took place in quiet rooms at the university and, for some archers, at their club.

The battery included a reading test to estimate IQ, a questionnaire on everyday lapses, the Trail Making Test, two cancellation tests (bells and letters, with 30 seconds instead of the minutes used clinically, because nobody missed a target in the pilot), bisection of lines on paper from 4 to 18 cm long with the offset measured in millimetres, the doorway task (two poles 1 cm either side of the widest part of the body, 20 passes, a bump counting only if the pole moved) and a computer search for a tilted red bar among distractors, in 4 blocks of 30 trials. The second experiment's task, on a 12-inch laptop half a metre away, showed each line for 2 seconds and allowed 2 seconds to pick the centre from five numbered bars, over 60 trials.

This is a master's thesis, not a paper that went through external peer review, and the design is cross-sectional: it compares already expert archers with non-archers, so it cannot say whether archery reduced pseudoneglect or whether people with more balanced attention find it easier to reach that level. The author acknowledges this. The archers are the same in both experiments and almost all men, and some were tested at their club rather than in the lab; nothing suggests that the person giving the tests was unaware of which group each participant belonged to. The differences amount to a few millimetres and one or two bumps in twenty passes, and nothing links them to score or aiming.

Some things in the tables do not add up. In the second experiment the table, as printed, gives the archers larger leftward offsets than the controls (for plain lines viewed directly, -7.2 against -1.45), while the text says the archers chose closer to the centre: either the columns are swapped or the reading is, and the thesis does not make clear which. The archers' leftward offset appears as 0.26 in the first experiment and as -0.26 in the second, and the controls in the two experiments, who are different people, have exactly the same score on the everyday lapses questionnaire. Each experiment has 59 participants, but the archers are the same in both: the number of different people is 89.

For anyone who shoots, this is a curiosity rather than guidance. The thesis suggests that good recurve archers have spatial attention that is slightly better balanced between right and left, on paper tests and in the doorway task, and that this shows up away from the range too. It does not say that this trait helps scoring, nor that training it improves aiming, and it cannot tell whether it comes from archery or was there before.

For a coach, the interesting point is the one the author leaves open: an advantage seen in tasks far removed from shooting may come from practice or from the selection of those who reach the top. Telling the two apart would need the same archers followed from beginner to expert, which was not done here.