Outdoor athletes show superior color detection in their peripheral vision

A recent study published in the journal Perception provides evidence that people who play outdoor sports have superior color detection in their peripheral vision compared to indoor athletes and non-athletes. This suggests that intense athletic training in large, open environments can physically shape and improve basic visual skills. The findings indicate that the adult brain retains the ability to adapt its low-level sensory functions based on real-world experiences, long after childhood development has ended.

The human eye has a specific biological structure that dictates how well we see certain things. The very center of the visual field is packed with specific light-detecting cells that process bright light and rich colors. As the gaze moves outward toward the edges, a concept scientists call retinal eccentricity, the eyes naturally become less sensitive to color and fine details.

Because of this natural biological limit, people usually move their eyes to bring important objects into the direct center of their focus. In fast-paced sports, players cannot always look directly at every moving teammate, opponent, or ball. They rely heavily on their side vision to monitor their surroundings and anticipate game movements.

Scientists wanted to understand if this constant reliance on side vision actually changes how the eyes and brain process visual information over time. This concept is known as perceptual learning, which refers to a lasting improvement in how the brain perceives sensory information after repeated exposure and practice. Past studies on athletic vision usually measured overall performance, like reaction times or the physical ability to hit moving targets in a limited time window.

The researchers designed this new study to isolate pure visual perception. They specifically wanted to test whether athletes literally see peripheral colors better than non-athletes, rather than simply reacting to them faster. They reasoned that athletes who play on large outdoor fields might develop stronger peripheral color vision to compensate for the natural drop in color sensitivity at the edges of the eye.

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“The debate is the ancient one of nature versus nurture. Basic functions such as color perception are typically thought to be hard-coded in our brains, as if we are born with them and that is it. However, together with other studies, we provide evidence that this is not the case: they can be improved through intensive training because our brains are, to some extent, plastic,” said Matteo Toscani, a senior lecturer at Bournemouth University and co-director of the Bournemouth Perception Lab.

“While I am generally interested in color vision and visual plasticity, the specific idea of testing athletes — while also comparing indoor and outdoor sports — was proposed by the lead author, Sidney Uden-Taylor, a student in my lab who also carried out the study.”

The researchers recruited 26 college-aged participants to complete the visual tests. The sample included eight outdoor athletes, nine indoor athletes, and nine non-athletes. The athletes had all participated in their respective sports for at least three years and trained an average of four and a half hours per week.

During the experiment, participants sat in a soundproof, dark room and stared at a cross in the center of a computer monitor. The scientists presented visual stimuli on the screen for just 250 milliseconds. These quick flashes appeared either on the left or right side of the screen at specific angles away from the center, ensuring the participants could not look directly at them.

The flashing images were either a small photograph of a human figure or a simple circle. The researchers adjusted the simple circle so it had the exact same number of pixels and the same average color as the human figure. The backgrounds behind these images displayed either an indoor blue sports venue or a grassy outdoor pitch.

Participants pressed a specific keyboard key to indicate whether the hidden object appeared on the left or right side of their visual field. To accurately measure their sensory limits, the researchers used a specialized computer program to constantly adjust the visibility of the objects. They achieved this by blending the target object with the background picture, making the image look slightly transparent.

If a participant answered correctly, the program made the object fade slightly more into the background for the next round. This adaptive method allowed the scientists to find the exact threshold of contrast at which a person could barely distinguish the object from the background. Each participant completed 1,920 individual trials during the two-hour session.

The data revealed that outdoor athletes were significantly better at detecting peripheral colors than both indoor athletes and non-athletes. The outdoor athletes required almost one-third less color contrast to successfully spot the objects on the edges of the screen. This indicates their visual systems were highly sensitive to faint visual cues in their periphery.

The scientists also found an interaction between the shape of the object and the type of background. Participants could spot the human figure and the simple circle equally well when they appeared on the indoor sports background. However, the human figure became significantly harder to see when it was presented against the visually complex outdoor grass background.

Despite this difficulty, the general visual advantage for outdoor athletes persisted across all conditions. They outperformed the other groups even when viewing simple circles on the indoor sports background. This suggests that the visual improvements gained from outdoor sports transfer to general situations and are not restricted to familiar sporting environments.

The scientists noted that outdoor sports like soccer and rugby take place on large fields, forcing players to constantly monitor wide, unpredictable spaces. Indoor sports, while fast-paced, happen in smaller, more enclosed areas. The results suggest that the expansive nature of outdoor sports provides the specific visual training needed to enhance peripheral color perception.

“If color vision is plastic, people born with color perception deficiencies may still outperform their congenital limits through interaction with the environment,” Toscani told PsyPost. “Evidence for this comes from studies of color-blind individuals (e.g. Boehm et al., 2014). Our results suggest that outdoor athletes need almost one third less contrast—that is, stimulus visibility—for a peripheral stimulus to be effectively detected compared with non-athletes and indoor athletes, likely reflecting adaptation to training in large open fields.

“We found this effect in peripheral vision, where reduced performance is attributed to anatomical constraints, from the structure of the eye to the way visual information is projected to and processed by the brain. The fact that peripheral vision is relatively poor is indeed why we move our eyes to bring objects into central vision, where resolution is higher. Outdoor athletes don’t need to do it as much as we do, as they have a better peripheral color, their brain probably adapted to accurate monitoring events occurring in the periphery.”

While the findings point toward the benefits of outdoor training, readers should avoid assuming a direct cause-and-effect relationship. Because the scientists observed naturally occurring groups of athletes and non-athletes, the study is correlational.

“While the study is consistent with the idea that outdoor training improves peripheral vision, which was the main focus of our investigation, this type of study remains correlational,” Toscani noted. “We could not experimentally manipulate training experience—for example, by randomly assigning children to 10 years of indoor sport, outdoor sport, or no sport, and then assessing their vision afterwards.”

It remains possible that people with naturally superior peripheral vision are simply drawn to outdoor sports from a young age. Another potential factor is the overlap in athletic activities outside of formal competition, which could muddy the data. For example, outdoor athletes might occasionally play indoor sports during their off-season, an activity that the researchers did not officially track.

The scientists are already looking ahead and plan to use immersive technology to present objects even further into the periphery of a person’s vision. “I have applied for a BBSRC grant to support further research into how vision in adults can be modified through gamified training in virtual reality environments,” Toscani said.

The study, “Athletes are better at peripheral colour detection,” was authored by Sidney Uden-Taylor, Anna Metzger, and Matteo Toscani.