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Does good vision make you smarter? (not OT by the end)

First a disclaimer... I have no particular expertise in this area and intend only for it be an interesting thinking point.  Take it with a grain of salt.  That said, I'll start with my own story.

About a week ago, I got contact lenses for the first time in about 15 years.  I am mainly nearsighted, but have alittle bit of astigmatism.  Normally a small amount of astigmatism can be corrected by overcorrecting the nearsightedness, which, because of the complexity (and expense) of correcting astigmatism with contact lenses, is usually tried first (with glasses, it's all the same so they just do right the first time).

It turns out, I'm one of the weird ones who's eyes just won't let the overcorrection make up for the astigmatism.  Over the past week, my eyes were trying though.  My vision seemed to go in an out throughout the day.  If I ever just let my eyes relax though, my vision would always go out.  I wasn't ever conciously trying to make my eyes adjust, but there was definitely something subconcious going on.

The interesting part to me was noticing that I was so much less aware of everything around me.  This was not only true of the times when my vision seemed to be the best, but was actually most true when my vision seemed to be at its best.  Somehow putting the mental effort in to self correcting my vision (even subconsciously) was reducing the amount of mental capacity I had to analyze what I was seeing.  While I could look around and see everything around me, I just didn't have that natural awareness of things like "while pulling out of this street, I need to be aware of the cars 10 seconds out to the left" and lost even more mental capacity as I had to make a conscious and deliberate effort to compensate.

The first time I saw the optometrist when getting my contacts, I was able to finagle my vision in to being close enough to 20/20 for the optometrist to let me go, but on the followup today, I just let my vision be where it wanted to be and they gave me some of the fancy astigmatism contacts.  My vision is very very nearly as good as it is with my glasses and the awareness problems are gone.

So how does this relate to basketball?  I've heard so many times about players who "just see the court better".  It's been said about ever great passer that ever played.  They clearly have it going right already, but what about those less fortuante players that just can't ever seem to be aware of what's going on around them?  The Z-Bo and Trout's of the world?  Is it possible that they have natural vision problems that the "vision control part of the brain" is working overtime to correct, thereby robbing them of potential court vision?  Or perhaps they already know they have astigmatism (or somethign similar) and just don't have it treated properly.

Some people are just blessed with natural ability.  Usain Bolt was just built better for sprinting than Bill Walton.  Some people are just going to have better vision.  As far as I know though, what I've described in this post isn't something the normal optometry community considers, and we may have some players that are unnecessarily hold thier own "court vision" back.

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I disagree

You’re essentially equating basketball IQ with IQ; court vision with regular vision. They’re unrelated.

The thing with players with great court vision, they see what they cant see. They know where, why, and how the other 9 players want to move on the court, they know what someone is going to do before they do it. This comes with experience, and communication. I bet if you followed alot of the “high IQ” players during timeouts, dead balls, etc, they were talking to their teammates alot, talking about cuts made, cuts not made, asking people what they saw or didn’t see and so on.

M, period. Fresh, comma.

by manzell on Dec 20, 2008 12:15 PM PST reply actions   0 recs

The title of my post was misleading

but I thought if I said “properly treated vision increases your awareness”, it would have come across like saying “making more shots increases your field goal percentage”.

What my point is though, is that “court vision” and “regular vision” are absolutely 100% related. You might not think so, but I just lived it. I have no doubt. With my improper contacts, I could make myself see 20/20 and usually did subconsciously without thinking about it, but doing so robbed me of most of my awareness. Letting my vision go blurry made it harder for me to know what some random object to my right was, but I was much more aware of it.

by Gargen on Dec 20, 2008 12:31 PM PST up reply actions   0 recs

what about periphrial vision?

No look passes anyone?

Honor Terry Porter

by Philthyanimal on Dec 20, 2008 7:07 PM PST up reply actions   0 recs

Sports Science Clip

Reaction/Peripheral vision feat. Corey Maggette: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElcVDyVFf7c

In terms of vision, while sharp vision doesn’t equate peripheral/court vision, it can surely help you. I had LASEK (PRK) done on my eyes to correct a shortsightedness and very light astigmatism, and it has improved my performance e.g. when snowboarding, playing basketball, or at school.

by Norsktroll on Dec 20, 2008 12:48 PM PST reply actions   0 recs

That's fun

but I have lots of questions. Peripheral vision can be measured, but I didn’t see comparison of measurements between Maggette and Average Joe. They also did not indicate at what time each saw the light but stated that Maggette’s quicker reaction time was related to his highly developed peripheral vision. At least with the info they gave on the video that is not a valid conclusion. He may have 1. Had better peripheral vision so actually saw the light sooner or 2. Reacted quicker to seeing the light or 3. was physically able to change direction more quickly or 4. moved his head at the right time. I realize this was not intended as scientific proof and am not slamming the explanation I’m just saying that I don’t think “court vision” is simply highly developed peripheral vision.

by jorga on Dec 20, 2008 1:22 PM PST up reply actions   0 recs

Yes it's more than that. E.g. Nash also has a highly developed feel for the game and his teammates

I just found it fitting even though that series is not as scientifically sound as the title would suggest. It’s more like Myth Busters for sports.

by Norsktroll on Dec 20, 2008 1:35 PM PST up reply actions   0 recs

I don't think it makes you "smarter"

but the brain and vision are connected in many ways. It could be that your brain (subconscious?) was working so hard at trying to adjust to this overcorrection that awareness was lessened. Were you aware of feeling tired? If you were consciously trying to change your vision it could have created physical stress which would certainly have affected awareness.

I wore contacts for many years because of nearsightedness and astigmatism. When my near vision started to deteriorate bifocal contacts were new and not very good and I never tried them. I reverted to glasses. Then I decided to try contacts again and my dr. talked about monovision – one lens for distance, one for close-up. I decided to try it and it worked beautifully for me (tho I never wore the close-up lens ; I could read well enough without it.) Many people’s brains can not make the adjustment to essentially see out of one eye at a time. I have no idea why it worked for me. I recently had a second cataract surgery and we discussed monovision (I had the first t surgery several years previously and that lens was distance only.) Although it had worked before it was without wearing the one lens and since the cataract lens was a permanent installation :-) I decided against it.

by jorga on Dec 20, 2008 1:56 PM PST reply actions   0 recs

More confident perhaps

but not smarter. After switching from regular glasses to contacts, my ability to “see the ball” was definitely better and I hit with more confidence. The basket seemed bigger, too. Likewise, following cataract surgeries, the world became brighter in multiple ways.

by OBJuan72 on Dec 20, 2008 4:48 PM PST reply actions   0 recs

Exhibit A: Hellen Keller

She was blind and deaf…. and SMART.

by Bust a Bucket on Dec 20, 2008 11:15 PM PST reply actions   0 recs

Interesting post.

This sort of bleeds into the same topics as the BBIQ post, or maybe this one inspired that one (I hadn’t even looked at this one til now for some reason).

Anyhow, I think I get the drift of what you are saying. Anything that the brain has to do takes some brain power or bandwidth. Like talking on your cell phone when driving, you may not think it makes you a worse driver, but do you check your mirrors and gages as often when on the phone? So if the brain is using some extra power to sort out fuzzy images, does it subtract from available power for thinking?

Actually another alternative may be that the brain just has less input available to make decisions with if images are fuzzy because it ignores them. Have you ever learned the definition of a new word and then all of a sudden you are hearing it all the time? Well you heard it just as often before, but now you know what it is so the brain takes the time to process it. When you didn’t know the definition the brain simply ignores it. There are already plenty of things to do and taking the time to process a word that it doesn’t understand just gets shoved to the back of the line.

So in basketball if there are some things on the court, vision-wise, that aren’t quite as clear as others, maybe the brain just prunes down the field of view and ignores those slightly fuzzy images. Essentially it decides to do the best it can with the good data and ignores the bad data.

This probably is a good explanation of experience also, in basketball or in life. Why does the savvy veteran, who is now physically slower, stay one step ahead of the 19 year old? More stuff is now automatic, freeing the brain to think about some of the more complex aspects of the play. Now I’m not thinking about my dribble…where to position the ball from the defender…how does this play develop.

Not to completely rehash my response on the BBIQ post, but processing power and intelligence are (almost) completely divorced. The ability to gather data, however, is the ability to learn which can enhance intelligence, or usability of intelligence, over the long run. Just like the example with vocabulary, learning new words leads to more still. One skill builds upon another.

The cowards never started
The weak died along the way
Only the strong survived
They were the Trailblazers

by lukeyhere on Dec 22, 2008 6:33 AM PST reply actions   0 recs

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