The effect of intensity of secondary task and attentional focus instructions on gaze behavior and accuracy of dart-throwing

Numerous studies have examined the effects of focus of attention and quiet eye on motor performance, however the effects of these two variables in different load of task are ambiguous. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of the internal and external focus of attention instructions on quiet eye and accuracy of dart-throwing in two intensity of the secondary task. participants were 20 novice persons in dart-throwing that selected by convenience sampling; and in four dual-task conditions of internal attention-without tone estimation, external attention-without tone estimation, internal attention-with tone estimation, and external attention-with tone estimation performed dart throwing in counterbalance form that at the same time their gaze data recorded by binoculars eye tracking system. The result of accuracy showed that participants in external rather than internal attention condition and low- intensity rather than high-intensity condition had less radial error. The result of quiet eye showed that only the main effect of the secondary task was significant that participants in high-intensity of the secondary task rather low had more quiet eye duration. These results highlight the importance of external focus of attention in low and high secondary task load conditions for dart-throwing performance and direct the future research to explore more deeply the role of the quiet eye and attentional focus effects in dart-throwing performance.