Pseudoscience of “peripheral expansion”

Art
Art
Nov 2 · 1 min read

I recently read an article by the Medium user @sswitch, discussing the alleged potential of "peripheral expansion" in speeding up reaction times of sportsmen. You might find the article here:

https://medium.com/sswitch/peripheral-expansion-slows-the-game-down-f1a0ec9962f

Sswitch has since blocked me after I tried to comment on this, as his article is a total misunderstanding of biological concepts. Firstly, the ability to recognize objects in peripheral field can not be simply trained as it relates to hardwired connections between the retina (our vision organ) and the brain that can not get modified by training.

Second, any sort of increased sensitivity to objects presented in peripheral vision depends on attentional training and is very poorly generalized across different contexts, as it is trained for specific objects. That’s why computer gamers would not become better racing drivers and vice versa. In short, it is not possible to expand peripheral vision and gain much from exercises in detecting moving objects.

I can only guess, why someone has put together this sort of nonsense - it seems to be a poor attempt of selling pseudoscience and one's coaching services. Frankly, this seems to be rather popular in sports.