Visual Behaviour in Tennis: An Ecological Dynamics Approach to Gaze Organisation During Serve Return

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Abstract
Serve return in tennis requires continuous integration between visual information and action regulation, a process that, according to ecological dynamics, emerges from the coupling between perception and action. The present pilot study explored gaze behaviour in competitive and recreational tennis players during serve return, considering fixation duration and count, spatial dispersion of gaze coordinates, and differences between the pre- and post-bounce phases. Four university students who play tennis (two competitive, two recreational) each completed 40 serve returns under representative conditions, wearing a Pupil Labs Neon eye-tracking system. Data were analysed at the block level and at the single-response level using descriptive statistics and mixed-effects models: competitive players showed on average longer fixations, a lower number of fixations, and less spatial dispersion of gaze; in both groups, fixation duration was greater in the pre-bounce phase than in the post-bounce phase; and competitive players descriptively achieved higher serve-return scores, with high-scoring serve returns showing greater overall fixation time. Given the exploratory nature of the study, these patterns suggest that the temporal and spatial organisation of gaze may help characterise the serve return, and point to the usefulness of representative protocols that preserve the functional rela-tionships between visual information and action.

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