Quiet Eye: What 75 Studies Say About the Gaze in Precision Movements

In brief. Across 75 studies, quiet eye, the last gaze fixation before an aiming movement, lasts longer in experts and on successful trials, with exceptions. Training it improves accuracy in the laboratory and under pressure; only two trials have measured real competition. Its causal role remains debated. Updated November 3, 2026.

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Fifty expert golfers, average handicap 3.6, hit putts under pressure until their first miss. The researchers compare their gaze on the first putt, the second-to-last and the one they miss (Vine et al., 2013). Before the putter moves, the fixation on the ball lasts just as long on all three putts. The gap comes afterward. On the missed putt, the part of the fixation that continues during the stroke, then after contact, is shorter. The gaze dropped out earlier.

This gaze has had a name since Joan Vickers' work: quiet eye, "the calm eye". You have probably heard that lengthening it would be enough to aim better. One can object that a longer gaze in the best players may be the trace of their level rather than its source. Three questions are often mixed up in this file: does quiet eye distinguish experts, can it be trained, and does it produce accuracy or merely accompany it?

Quiet eye: definition and measurement of the last fixation before the movement

Quiet eye refers to the final fixation, or pursuit, placed on a specific location in the scene for at least 100 milliseconds before the decisive movement (Causer et al., 2010). Vickers observed its first signs in putting (Vickers, 1992), then defined it in the free throw (Vickers, 1996), the definition that later studies adopt. It is described by its onset, its offset and its duration, and in golf by three parts: before the putter starts, during the stroke, after contact. Its total duration there commonly reaches two to three seconds, because the fixation continues after the strike (Leivers et al., 2026).

Keeping the eye still means holding back saccades, those rapid jumps of the gaze, under the control of the frontal eye field among others. Most studies use a mobile eye tracker, others use electro-oculography, valid with certain settings (Gallicchio et al., 2018; Gallicchio et al., 2024).

The way of counting also matters: a meta-analysis finds larger effects when quiet eye is expressed as a percentage of trial duration than in milliseconds (Lebeau et al., 2016).

Experts and successful trials: a longer quiet eye in most aiming movements

Three meta-analyses point the same way. The first, on 42 studies and 388 effect sizes, shows that experts make fewer, longer fixations, quiet eye included (Mann et al., 2007). The second, on 27 studies, puts the gap between experts and novices at d = 1.04, a large effect, and the gap between successful and missed trials within the same person at d = 0.58, a medium effect (Lebeau et al., 2016). The third, on 26 studies and 611 athletes in individual sports, finds again in experts fewer, longer fixations, on fewer locations, without giving a quiet-eye-specific figure in its abstract (Wang et al., 2026).

Free throw studies are covered in the article on the gaze in the free throw. In eight university ice hockey goaltenders facing deflected shots, a quiet eye that starts early and lasts long goes with more saves (Panchuk et al., 2017); soccer goalkeepers have their own file, that of the goalkeeper's quiet eye. In penalties, the fixation that moves ahead of the ball after the strike relates to another gaze mechanism, described in the article following the ball with your eyes.

Golf, shooting, badminton: the studies where quiet eye separates nothing

The rule has holes, often in very strong players or in young ones.

In 26 basketball players who each take 100 free throws, the consistency of quiet eye from one trial to the next explains success better than its average duration, with 56% of the variance explained (Mizusaki et al., 2025). In golf, the quiet eye duration of novices increases by 53% between the easiest and the hardest shot, whereas that of intermediate and sub-elite golfers does not vary with difficulty: a ceiling effect that could itself signal level (Leivers et al., 2026).

Anxiety, effort, mental fatigue: quiet eye shortens under pressure

Under anxiety, quiet eye shortens and accuracy follows in several movements: in ten basketball players at the free throw (Wilson et al., 2009), in twenty participants on a simulated joystick archery task (Behan and Wilson, 2008), in sixteen elite shotgun shooters in competition, with a less efficient gun movement and fewer clay targets hit (Causer et al., 2011). Wilson and Causer read this through attentional control theory: anxiety pulls attention away from the goal.

Golfers who approach competition as a challenge, not a threat, have a longer quiet eye and better results, without quiet eye explaining the performance gap (Moore et al., 2013). In 21 novices, playing the putt "to win the hole" makes it more accurate and lengthens quiet eye (Runswick et al., 2021).

In ten elite biathletes, the relationship between quiet eye and accuracy changes direction with the intensity of effort (Vickers and Williams, 2007), and a study of 23 biathletes from the German national teams finds no effect of the final fixation (Heinrich et al., 2020). In ten basketball players, only severe effort, around 86% of maximum heart rate, degrades accuracy by 19% and quiet eye by 45%; the drop in quiet eye predicts 33% of the drop in accuracy (Wilson et al., 2018). In eleven elite table tennis players aged 14.7, fatigue lowers quiet eye and performance (Vincze and Jurchiș, 2022). In thirty amateur female golfers, on a 2 m putt, mental fatigue reduces quiet eye by 139 ms and physical fatigue by 161 ms (Khalaji et al., 2025).

Thirty tennis players trained for ten days on a working memory task, with no gaze instruction at all, improve under high pressure the offset of their quiet eye and their volley (Ducrocq et al., 2017). The gaze might therefore reflect the control of attention as much as it produces it.

Training quiet eye: trials in golf, shooting, penalty kicks and basketball

The typical protocol combines video of an expert's gaze, video of one's own gaze and instructions about fixation; the control group receives technical instructions or the same practice without gaze instructions.

Lebeau's second synthesis, on nine intervention articles, gives very large effects on quiet eye (d = 1.53) and on performance (d = 0.84), and the gain in quiet eye partly predicts the gain in performance (Lebeau et al., 2016). A 2026 meta-analysis of 21 studies on counteracting choking under pressure, including quiet eye training, finds clear effects on accuracy (g = 0.66), more consistent in closed movements (g = 0.455), weaker and less robust in open movements after correction for publication bias (Zeng et al., 2026).

From laboratory to competition: what quiet eye training transfers

Only two trials have followed real competition, and both are positive: 1.9 fewer putts per round in elite golfers (Vine et al., 2011), better accuracy in competition in international shooters (Causer, Holmes and Williams, 2011). The penalty shows the other face: the advantage gained in seven weeks disappears during a penalty shootout session, even though fixations remain longer (Wood and Wilson, 2011). In basketball, the accuracy of novices trained in quiet eye falls back as soon as a defender enters the play, whereas that of intermediate players stays above the control group (Vickers et al., 2017).

Quiet eye training in darts benefits the bag toss (Harrison et al., 2026). But in basketball players, accuracy transfers to darts, not quiet eye (Rienhoff et al., 2013). In expert dart players, quiet eye shortens as soon as the distance or the arm changes; the authors conclude that it would be a product of expertise more than a driver, and doubt the value of teaching it in isolation (Flindall et al., 2020). The debate overlaps with that of far transfer.

The place of measurement matters too. In five expert golfers, quiet eye predicts error on a real green, not in virtual reality (Bennett et al., 2025, comparison). In penalties, a real run-up mostly directs the gaze toward the ball, which protocols without a run-up do not reproduce (Kurz and Munzert, 2018). In putting, participants trained in quiet eye are also more disturbed when wooden blocks under their feet change the height of their eyes (Jacobson et al., 2021).

Programming, online control, inhibition: the debate on the quiet eye mechanism

In 2016, the journal Current Issues in Sport Science published an article by Vickers on the origin and open questions of quiet eye (Vickers, 2016), followed by sixteen commentaries from researchers and a reply from the author. The disagreement is about what the phenomenon does, and four explanations coexist.

The first makes quiet eye a window for programming the movement. Shortened by force, it degrades the shot in billiards (Williams et al., 2002). It comes with stronger cortical preparation activity in experts (Mann et al., 2011) and, on successful putts, larger cortical potentials in prefrontal, premotor and parietal regions (Xu et al., 2021), those of motor planning. Moore's mediation analysis (2012) partly supports this reading. But a quiet eye lengthened by a harder task does not make the putt more successful (Walters-Symons et al., 2018).

The second insists on online control during the movement. In 27 skilled golfers, seeing only the start of the putt harms accuracy despite a preserved quiet eye, while seeing only the end does not (Vine et al., 2017). In 21 novices deprived of vision at the start of the movement, preparation lengthens without compensating for the loss of visual control during the movement (Causer et al., 2017).

The third, inhibition, starts from a paradox: expertise saves control, and yet experts have the longest quiet eye (Mann, Wright and Janelle, 2016). For Klostermann and colleagues, the fixation would protect the right motor solution against its neighboring variants. A prolonged quiet eye helps only if the task imposes a lot of information (Klostermann et al., 2013). Its effectiveness appears only under an instruction of attention directed to the movement (Klostermann et al., 2014). Induced experimentally between 400 and 3,200 ms, it penalizes short durations, with no difference among long durations (Klostermann et al., 2018). From the free throw line, accuracy and quiet eye exceed what neighboring distances predict (Klostermann, 2019).

The fourth comes from ecological dynamics, of which two researchers laid out in this debate what it could contribute (Davids and Araújo, 2016). In a descriptive case study of professional soccer goalkeepers, quiet eye varies from one goalkeeper and one save to the next, and the authors see in this an adaptive variability, specific to each person's perception-action coupling (Franks et al., 2022). The reanalysis of five experienced goalkeepers points the same way: only the location of the quiet eye, the ball most often, remains stable (Ramsey et al., 2020). These two small studies contradict the idea of a quiet eye duration common to everyone, without being enough to refute it.

Virtual reality trials test causality directly. In 127 novices, moving the fixation or changing its duration changes performance little (Harris et al., 2021). In a second article from the same team, participants keep their fixation even with no image at all; masking vision degrades accuracy, but modestly (89 cm of error versus 105), and a fixation point that moves discreetly degrades it just as much, at equal image (Harris et al., 2023). The stillness of the gaze would therefore have a role of its own, beyond the information it provides. For a 2021 review, its mechanisms remain poorly understood (Dalton, 2021).

Links between studies

Several studies come from the same teams, which weighs on their independence: Vine, Wilson and Harris in golf, Bennett in virtual reality, Vincze in table tennis and sabre.

Established, debated, extrapolated: the limits of the quiet eye evidence, and the ophthalmologist first

Established: experts and successful trials have on average a longer quiet eye (meta-analyses of Mann 2007 and Lebeau 2016), anxiety shortens it, and its training improves accuracy in the laboratory and under induced pressure, especially in closed movements (several small randomized trials). Debated: transfer to competition (two positive trials, one advantage lost in the penalty), the causal role of the fixation, its mechanism, its useful duration. Extrapolated: the idea that lengthening an athlete's quiet eye will win them points in a match, and any generalization to sports without a study.

The limits come from the shape of the studies: samples often between ten and twenty-four participants, many novices in putting, measures that vary. In open movements, the 2026 meta-analysis sees its effects shrink and lose robustness after correction for publication bias. In youth, two studies do not find the expected link (Shah et al., 2020; Han et al., 2026).

Our prediction, which research can refute: in the next randomized, preregistered trial that measures both quiet eye and a competition statistic on a closed movement, the advantage in competition will be smaller than in the laboratory. If it is equal or larger, our reading of transfer is wrong and we will correct it.

Before applying these studies to an athlete's gaze, the order stays fixed. If your athlete reports double vision, a blur that persists, headaches during effort or dizziness, visual training waits. They see an ophthalmologist first, then an orthoptist in France, or an optometrist in Switzerland or the United States. LabO RNP is neither medical nor paramedical, and comes as a complement to a care pathway, never in its place. LabO RNP works with optometrists; the curriculum was built with them.

One fixation, one movement: quiet eye in the sensorimotor loop

Quiet eye sums up in a few hundred milliseconds what LabO RNP teaches movement professionals: sensory inputs, of which vision is a large part, and the sensorimotor loop, where what the athlete sees organizes what they do, and where what they do changes what they look at. The article on oculomotor exercises in the warm-up places the gaze within a session, and the map of the evidence in sports vision places quiet eye among the other families of visual training. Reading these studies does not tell you what to do with your athlete; the Introduction to RNP sets that framework.

A longer fixation goes with the right movement, and the proof that it produces it remains under discussion.

👉 I want to learn to read what happens between the eye and the movement.

Quiet eye, question by question

What is quiet eye?

It is the last fixation, or pursuit, of the gaze on a target for at least 100 milliseconds before the decisive movement of a precision action: putt, shot, free throw, penalty.

How long does a quiet eye last?

Around 400 ms in international shotgun shooters (Causer, Holmes and Williams, 2011), two to three seconds in golf, fixation after the strike included (Leivers et al., 2026). Induced between 400 and 3,200 ms in ball throwing, it penalizes short durations without separating the long ones (Klostermann et al., 2018). No optimal duration is established.

Can you train quiet eye?

Yes, in the published trials: expert gaze video, video of one's own gaze and fixation instructions lengthen quiet eye and improve accuracy in golf, shooting, penalties and basketball. A synthesis of nine intervention articles reports very large effects on quiet eye (d = 1.53) and on performance (d = 0.84) (Lebeau et al., 2016).

Does quiet eye training improve performance in competition?

Two trials measured it, both positive: 1.9 fewer putts per round in elite golfers (Vine et al., 2011), better accuracy in competition in skeet shooters (Causer, Holmes and Williams, 2011). In penalties, the advantage disappeared under the pressure of a penalty shootout session (Wood and Wilson, 2011).

Why would a longer gaze help the movement?

Four hypotheses coexist: movement preparation, visual control during the movement, protection of the right motor solution, coupling specific to each athlete. Virtual reality trials suggest that the stillness of the gaze matters as much as the image received (Harris et al., 2023). The causal role of quiet eye remains debated.

Do you need medical advice before working on an athlete's gaze?

At the slightest visual signal, double vision, a blur that persists, headaches during effort or dizziness, the athlete sees an ophthalmologist first, then an orthoptist or an optometrist depending on the country. LabO RNP is neither medical nor paramedical, and comes as a complement to a care pathway, never in its place.

Method. Inventory of 94 references on quiet eye, built on November 3, 2026 from PubMed and our reading notes. 75 studies are cited, five of them outside the inventory (Williams 2002, Klostermann 2013 and 2018, Flindall 2020, Dalton 2021) and four publications without a PMID cited by their DOI: Vickers' 2016 article, two commentaries from the same journal and an exploratory study on goalkeepers. Excluded: references without a usable abstract, without a verifiable identifier or redundant. Identifiers verified on the PubMed or Crossref record on November 3, 2026.

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By the LabO RNP team