A critical analysis of the functional parameters of the quiet eye using immersive virtual reality

Directing ocular fixations toward a target assists the planning and control of visually guided actions. In far aiming tasks, the quiet eye, an instance of premovement gaze anchoring, has been extensively studied as a key performance variable. However, theories of quiet eye are yet to establish the exact functional role of the location and duration of the fixation. The present work used immersive virtual reality to manipulate key parameters of the quiet eye-location (Experiment 1) and duration (Experiment 2)-to test competing theoretical predictions about their importance. Across two preregistered experiments, novice participants (n = 127) completed a series of golf putts while their eye movements, putting accuracy, and putting kinematics were recorded. In Experiment 1, participants' premovement fixation was cued to locations on the ball, near the ball, and far from the ball. In Experiment 2, long and short quiet eye durations were induced using auditory tones as cues to movement phases. Linear mixed effects models indicated that manipulations of location and duration had little effect on performance or movement kinematics. The findings suggest that, for novices, the spatial and temporal parameters of the final fixation may not be critical for movement preprogramming and may instead reflect attentional control or movement inhibition functions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).