The effect of internal and external attention focus on quiet eye characteristics of military elite shooters

Quiet eye is one of the cognitive factors that it affects shooting function. The aim of present study was to examine the effects of attention focus on quiet eye characteristics in military elite shooters. In this semi-experimental study, 10 elite male military shooters (30-42 years old) with at least 10 years of experience in professional shooting, were selected as available samples and performed shooting under two conditions of internal (focus on forearm, elbow angle, wrists and fingers) and external focus (focus on Seibel) in a counter balance design. In each condition, 20 trails were conducted, each lasted 20 seconds. Quiet eye characteristics were recorded by eye tracking equipment and analyzed by paired repeated measures ANOVA method. Our findings showed that the quiet eye onset was earlier and quiet eye period and offset were longer under external focus of attention (p≤0.001). Research findings supports constraint action hypothesis and Prinz’s theory of common coding and confirmed the benefits of external focus of attention for skilled athletes and emphasized its importance on improving quiet eye characteristics. According to results of the study, it can be suggested to coaches and military shooters to improve the quiet eye characteristics by using external focus of attention instructions