Eye Tracking Strategies during Setting among Volleyball Players of Different Skill Levels

The purposes of this study was to investigate the differences of decision-making time and area of interest (AOI) setting phase during setting among college female volleyball players of different skill levels. Fifteen elite, sixteen sub-elite volleyball players, and fourteen novices were recruited for this study. Five types of setting films were recorded by using high speed camera, and each film was separated into three setting phases: before setting, during setting and after setting. In addition, the frames of the film were separated into three AOIs, including the arm, the body and the ball. During watching the videos, the subjects needed to press the ＂space＂ immediately to determine decision-making time, and the positions of pupils of the eyes were simultaneously recorded by the iView RED eye tracker. The results showed that both elite and sub-elite players spent significantly lesser decision-making time and higher accuracy than the novices. Before setting, the elite players spent significantly more time than the novices to fix at AOI. During setting the elite and sub-elite players spent significantly more time than the novices to fix at AOI, while there were no significant differences among three groups after setting. The percentage of AOI on the ball of the sub-elite players and novices were significant higher than the elite players. Furthermore we found significant differences among three groups of the percentage of AOI on the arm; the sub-elite players were predominant compared to the elite players of the percentage of the AOI on the body. These findings concluded that the elite players could make a faster decision by staring at the arm movement of the setter, which might be result from the knowledge and recognition ability related to volleyball. Thus, the skilled players can efficiently process the relevant information.