| Summary: | M.Phil. === Vision is the most dominant of the five senses and plays an important role in our daily lives. The sensory information obtained through vision is of utmost importance in the way we perceive and respond to the world around us. Vision has often been neglected when evaluating the performance of athletes. Would you be able to catch a ball with your eyes closed, more than likely not? This example indicates the necessity of vision to perform specific motor tasks, such as is required in sports. Anatomically there are differences between the male and female body and therefore a variance in performance should be expected. The fact that visual skills can be leamed or even taught brings about the question of what effect age, gender and experience have on the performance of an athlete on these specific visual skills. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the variations between male and female visual skills measured during a sports vision evaluation. A protocol was devised to create a set of norms for the athletes tested and these norms were then compared to previous norms set out for elite athletes. In this study 209 female and 251 male non-elite athletes were tested. The subjects varied between the age of 18 and 19 and were in their first year of study at the then Rand Afrikaans University, now known as the University of Johannesburg. The study indicated that a significant difference in performance between the gender groups does exist and that separate norms should indeed be used when evaluating male and female athletes. The female athletes performed better on the Visual Acuity and Colour vision tests, with the male athletes performing better on the Contrast Sensitivity Row E, Fusion Flexibility, Eye-Hand Coordination Pro and Re Action, Eye-Body Coordination, Visual Reaction Time Right and Left hand, Visual Adjustability Left and Right Base positions and Visualization tests. Equal performance was achieved in the Contrast Sensitivity Row A; B, C and D, Stereopsis and Visual Adjustability Up and Down Base position tests. It is thus clear that the males performed better on most of the tests done.
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