An Embodied Approach to Gaze in Sport

Gaze behavior in sport is often looked at from a classical cognitive perspective. However, an embodied approach can allow us to explain why, for instance, gaze strategies for the same visual stimuli and task alter when people press a button, provide a verbal response, or perform a complex sport-specific movement. An embodied cognition perspective can provide answers to these issues (in contrast to cognitive perspectives, which often describe behavior from perception to action, but ignore the link from action to perception). To illustrate the benefits and limits of an embodied perspective on gaze in sport, this chapter follows a stepwise approach. First, we present a summary of the existing literature that integrates perception and action through capturing gaze behavior when observing or executing movements. Second, we refer to selected fields of gaze research in sport and discuss the findings from an embodied perspective to scope when and where an embodied perspective may provide an alternative approach to studying gaze in sport. Finally, we discuss theoretical, methodological, and practical implications of an embodied approach to gaze in sport to set the stage for future research and to suggest recommendations for the sports field.