Imagery guided by virtual reality improves shooting more than video-guided imagery

The summary today

The comparison has been made once, in Turkey, in thirty-four athletes from precision sports: fourteen curlers, thirteen bowlers and only seven archers, randomly split into three groups for four weeks. One group watched a first-person video of a successful shot on a laptop and then imagined it; a second did the same, watching the 360-degree version of the same video in a headset; and the third watched entertaining videos about their own sport. The headset group goes from 4.68 to 7.33 on a scale from 0 to 10, the video group from 5.21 to 6.60 and the control group from 5.06 to 5.37: the headset group pulls away from the other two from the second week, while the video group pulls away from the control only in the fourth, and at the end the headset group is still ahead of the video group by 1.27 points of improvement (p = 0.002). Three things hold the reading back. The results are not broken down by sport, and the archers number two or three per group, with a task of five shots at 30 metres on a 30-centimetre square, a long way from competition. The headset group started from the lowest mean, and part of its recovery may be regression towards the mean. Finally, the ability to imagine the movement, measured with a questionnaire, grows by a similar amount with the video and with the headset, so the advantage in scores cannot be put down to a greater gain in imagery ability, at least as that questionnaire measures it. With seven archers out of thirty-four and the data not separated, the claim rests on athletes from other sports.

Also phrased as: "visualisation in virtual reality"; "headset for mental training"; "imagery of the shot with virtual reality"; "360-degree video to visualise the shot"

Evidence

• 2021
  For Other sport Published later

  34 Turkish athletes from precision sports (14 curlers, 13 bowlers, 7 archers), randomly split into three groups for four weeks, task scores on a scale from 0 to 10. Relative to baseline, in the second week the headset group improves more than the control group by 1.97 points (p < 0.001) and more than the video group by 1.43 (p = 0.003), while the video group cannot be told apart from the control (0.54, p = 0.245). In the fourth week the video group is ahead of the control by 1.07 (p = 0.010) and the headset group ahead of the video group by 1.27 (p = 0.002). In the third week the authors mark the comparison between video and control as significant (0.93, p = 0.030), although it sits above their corrected threshold of 0.017. The data are not broken down by sport.

  The Effect of Virtual Reality Technology on the Imagery Skills and Performance of Target-Based Sports Athletes · Deniz Bedir, Süleyman Erim Erhan

• 2021
  Context Other sport Published later

  In the same study, without taking time into account the three groups do not differ in score (group effect F(2,31) = 1.106, p = 0.344): the finding lies in the week-by-week course (interaction F = 8.508, p < 0.001). The headset group started from the lowest mean, 4.68 against 5.21 for the video group and 5.06 for the control, and ends at 7.33 against 6.60 and 5.37.

  The Effect of Virtual Reality Technology on the Imagery Skills and Performance of Target-Based Sports Athletes · Deniz Bedir, Süleyman Erim Erhan

• 2021
  Context Other sport Published later

  In the same study, the ability to imagine movement measured with the MIQ-R questionnaire rises from 3.97 to 5.27 with the video and from 3.57 to 5.04 with the headset, against 3.97 and 4.17 in the control group; between video and headset there is no difference (-0.17, p = 0.668). The headset's advantage in scores is not matched by a greater gain in imagery ability.

  The Effect of Virtual Reality Technology on the Imagery Skills and Performance of Target-Based Sports Athletes · Deniz Bedir, Süleyman Erim Erhan

Status history

1. 1990 Not studied In the registry's bibliography nobody has yet compared imagery guided by virtual reality with imagery guided by a video: the question has not been asked.
2. 2021 Transferred A Turkish randomised study of thirty-four athletes from precision sports, fourteen curlers, thirteen bowlers and only seven archers, compares four weeks of imagery guided by virtual reality, imagery guided by a video and a control group. The headset group pulls away from the others from the second week, the video group pulls away from the control only in the fourth, and at the end the headset is still ahead of the video. Without taking time into account the three groups do not differ, and the headset group started from the lowest mean. The results are not broken down by sport and the archers are a minority, two or three per group: the claim rests on athletes from other sports, transferred.

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