Visual Search Strategies in Badminton Serve : Expertise and Performance(Sucess or Failure) Perspective

PURPOSE The main purpose of this study was to examine the difference in visual search strategies based on the skill level in success and failure cases in badminton short serves.METHODS To this end, six badminton experts (experience: more than 10 years) and six novices (less than 1 years) participated. The participants’ eye movement was recorded during each trial, and mean fixation duration, mean saccade amplitude, percentage of viewing time on each fixation location, final fixation duration, and gaze entropy were analyzed.RESULTS First, the mean fixation duration did not differ significantly, but the mean saccade amplitude increased when expert players failed to perform the serve successfully. Second, the percentage of viewing time on each location results showed that the overall viewing time was lower when the performance was unsuccessful, and the expert players fixated longer time viewing the net and space when they made a successful serve. Third, expert players showed longer QE than novice players when they made a successful serve. Finally, the gaze entropy results showed that expert players showed greater gaze entropy during successful performance, indicating that the gaze pattern was randomly distributed across trials.CONCLUSIONS When learning a badminton serve, we should fully recognize and explore the receiver’s location and external environment, and subsequently, before initiating serve movement, focus on the net or space between the receiver’s racquet and shoulders to make a more successful performance. In addition, we should make various patterns of the visual search strategy, rather than the fixed or consistent search strategy, to deceive receivers.