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Mobile eye tracking technology enables the objective evaluation of what, when, and how athletes use visual information from the environment to control action in service of skilled performance. This review highlights the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) to consider before adopting this technology to evaluate visual–motor control for enhanced skill acquisition and performance in sport. Strengths include increased ecological validity by recording the athlete within their natural performance environment. Weaknesses include diminished tracking fidelity based on the eye’s morphology or squinting, eye tracker movement, and lens fogging. Opportunities consist of novel assessments around research themes such as combatting the negative effects of pressure and performance enhancement through personalized training. The formfitting technologies also introduce recording opportunities during standard practices. Data processing time, synchronization of video streams, and hand coding of variables comprise the threats in addition to the hardware cost and the fees associated with crowdsourcing data coding. Currently, it is also not feasible to provide coaches with a report of their athletes’ data in a timeline suitable to create player-specific drills. Evaluating portable eye tracking technology with a SWOT framework helps translate scientific knowledge to practitioners considering implementing this technology for athlete assessment and development.

Indoor and outdoor home space may support physical activity (PA) and enhance motor skills (MS). However, there is limited knowledge about how indoor and outdoor home space affect PA and MS parent–child dyads. This cross-sectional study examined whether indoor and outdoor home spaces affect PA and MS in children and their parents. MS was measured with the Test of Gross Motor Development-3, and moderate to vigorous PA (MVPA) was assessed using accelerometry in 43 and 48 parent–child dyads, respectively. Indoor and outdoor home spaces were self-reported through an online questionnaire. Multiple regression models were fit to determine the relationship between indoor and outdoor home space and MS and MVPA in children and parents separately. Controlling for theory-based covariates, outdoor home space was positively associated with children’s MVPA (p < .05) and parents’ MS (p < .05) but negatively associated with parents’ MVPA (p < .05). Indoor home space was negatively associated with parents’ MS (p < .05). No other significant findings emerged. Findings suggest indoor and outdoor home spaces may play unique roles in supporting PA and MS among parent–child dyads and should be investigated in more rigorous studies.

The purpose of this study was to examine the associations of outdoor playtime, screen time, and sleep duration with ball bouncing skills in a sample of 3- to 5-year-old children. Participants were young children (N = 11,121; 48.8% female) whose parent/guardian completed the 2022 National Survey of Children’s Health. The dependent variable was one item that asked about the child’s ability to bounce a ball repeatedly. The primary independent variables were the National Survey of Children’s Health items asking about hours of weekday and weekend outdoor play, screen time, and sleep duration. The primary analysis consisted of robust Poisson regression models to calculate adjusted prevalence ratios by regressing competent (high) ball bouncing skills with reported hours of weekday and weekend outdoor play, screen time, and sleep. After covariate adjustment, two or more hours spent in weekday outdoor play was associated with a 15%–41% higher prevalence of competent ball bouncing skills (p < .01), and three or more hours of weekend outdoor play was associated with a 14%–28% higher prevalence of competent ball bouncing skills (p < .05). More hours of outdoor play were associated with competency in ball bouncing skills in young children. Mechanisms for this association are unclear and warrant further investigation.

Children tend to make more last-minute locomotor adjustments than adults when avoiding stationary obstacles. The purpose of this study was to compare avoidance behaviors of middle-aged children (10–12 years old) with young adults during a head-on collision course with an approaching virtual pedestrian. Participants were immersed in a virtual environment and completed a perceptual decision-making task in which they had to respond to the future direction of an approaching virtual pedestrian once they disappeared. Following the perceptual task, participants walked along an 8-m pathway toward a goal, while avoiding a collision with a virtual pedestrian who approached along the midline than veered toward the left, right, or continued walking straight. Results revealed that children were able to correctly predict the future directions of the virtual pedestrian similar to adults, albeit at a slower response time (0.55 s vs. 0.33 s). During the action task, children initiated a deviation in their travel path later (i.e., closer to the virtual pedestrian) compared to adults (1.65 s vs. 1.52 s). Children were also more variable in their onset of deviation and time-to-contact. Although children appear to have developed adult-like perceptual abilities and can avoid an approaching virtual pedestrian, children employ riskier avoidance strategies and are highly variable, suggesting middle-aged children are still fine-tuning their perception-action system.

The aim of this study was to determine the psychometric properties of the pictorial scale of Perceived Movement Skill Competence for Turkish children. A total of 255 children aged 5–10 years (131 girls and 124 boys) participated in this study. One week later, a random subsample (n = 40) was implemented the scale again for test–retest reliability. We conducted confirmatory factor analysis to test the construct validity of the Turkish version of the scale and calculated the omega (ω) internal consistency and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) to ascertain reliabilities of the subscales. The confirmatory factor analysis showed good fit index values for the model with 13 items indicating a similar factor structure to the original scale’s two-factor structure (χ ²/df = 1.56; root mean square error of approximation  = .048; Tucker–Lewis index  = .97; comparative-fit index  = .97). The test–retest reliabilities were excellent for the perceived locomotor (ICC = .95) and object control (ICC = .93) skills. An adequate internal consistency coefficient was found for locomotor (ω = 0.69) and object control (ω = 0.82) skills. Subsequent analyses supported the construct, metric, partial scalar and strict invariance of responses to the scale as a function of sex. Overall, the pictorial scale of Perceived Movement Skill Competence has acceptable psychometric properties and can be confidently used in research or practice to assess Turkish children’s perceived movement skill competence.

This study examined the effect of time of day on immediate recall of motor skills (i.e., tactical behaviors in basketball) from different external visualizations. First-year students from a public university in sports science (novice practitioners, 18.96 ± 0.57 years) were quasi-randomly assigned to three experimental conditions: video modeling by experts, a sequential-with-tracing presentation of pictures, or a sequential-without-tracing presentation of pictures. Morning and late afternoon sessions were conducted involving study phases and immediate-recall tests (i.e., comprehension and game performance tests). Oral temperature and mood states were also measured at both times of day. The results revealed that participants exhibited better recall performances in the morning, irrespective of the visualization format used. At both time of day, tactical behaviors were better recalled from video modeling rather than the two sequential presentations of pictures. In addition, providing the learner with a permanent visual trace of the previous states improves the immediate recall of tactical skills from a sequential presentation of pictures, at both time of day. Furthermore, morning sessions resulted in lower oral temperature, lower negative mood, and higher positive mood, compared with afternoon sessions. Implications for using external visualizations aimed at the acquisition of motor skills, particularly tactical behaviors, are discussed.

This study’s objective was to examine whether the relationship between actual motor competence and physical activity (PA) in children is mediated by perceived motor competence (PMC) and physical activity enjoyment. The participants consisted of a total of 167 students (male = 92, female = 75) in 10 different schools in the fourth grade of primary schools in the central district of Isparta Province, Turkey, during the 2020–2021 academic year. Multiple parallel mediation analysis was used to examine the mediation role in the analysis of the data, and regression analysis based on the bootstrapping method was performed. As a result of the research, it was seen that PMC had a full mediating role between actual motor competence and PA (b = 0.003, 95% confidence interval [0.002, 0.094]). On the other hand, it was determined that PA enjoyment did not have a mediating role in this relationship (b = 0.001, 95% confidence interval [−0.002, 0.005]). The total indirect effect was not significant (b = 0.005, 95% confidence interval [−0.000, 0.012]). The multiple mediation analysis showed that PMC accounted for 23.2% of the total effect of actual motor competence on PA. In conclusion, the findings show that PMC is an important variable in participation in PA. Therefore, PMC should be considered a key outcome in physical education.