JKA Vic Article - The Visual System and Karate

Articles

The Visual System and Karate

By Doctor Michael Kalloniatis, Professor of Vision Science
University of Auckland New Zealand.

Sight is probably the most refined of the human senses. Without vision there would be no perception, and in Karate we need to not only perceive our opponent, we must also have the ability to judge his movements in order to make the appropriate response.

Dr. Michael Kalloniatis has agreed to put forward a series of short articles for the jkavic website under the broad heading of Vision in Karate. Mike received his optometry degree and Master's degree from the University of Melbourne then moved to the United States where he received his PhD from the University of Houston, College of Optometry. His post-doctoral training continued at the University of Texas in Houston where he developed a keen interest in retinal neurochemistry. He also maintains an active research laboratory in visual psychophysics focussing on colour vision and visual adaptation. He was a faculty member of the Department of Optometry and Vision Sciences at the University of Melbourne until his move to New Zealand in 2002. Dr. Kalloniatis is now the Robert G. Leitl Professor of Optometry, Department of Optometry and Vision Science at the University of Auckland.

As well as being an accomplished scientist, Mike is a high ranking JKA Karateka. He trained at JKA Melbourne with Nishimura Sensei and moved through the ranks to eventually take his place in the Melbourne Instructors class. He is an unassuming man who approaches his Karate training with a minimum of fuss, infact he gave no hint of his scholastic ability among his Karate peers in almost all the time he trained. Mike continues his leading edge research and he continues to train with Sensei Zel Unkovich of JKA New Zealand

Part One: The visual system and Karate

Our visual system is designed to ignore certain information. For example, during eye movements, the world does not move as our eyes are moving from one location to the other. The reason this occurs is due to suppression of the visual input during rapid eye movements (referred to as saccadic suppression). A similar phenomenon occurs when we blink. Blink suppression is instigated when we blink leading to decrease sensitivity to the visual world, specifically designed to eliminate our perception of the eyelid coming across our eye. Although these suppression events are very short, typically less than a second, during these periods of suppression we are insensitive to visual stimuli within our visual space. The logical conclusion to be drawn from this is to minimise eye movements and blinking when engaging in kumite.

A second issue relates to attending to a visual scene. In our case it is attending to an opponent. In field sports such as football the great players are often described as ‘having great vision’ because they are able to pick out their players within a pack and have the athletic skill to accurately delivery the ball. To illustrate the complexity of such a task and how distracters can influence our decision, we will go through three examples. The key messages here are, firstly that when actively attending to another task, quite blatant visual events are ignored - Refer examples #1 and #2. Second, slow changes in the visual scene can be ‘perceptually’ almost invisible - Refer example #3.

The answers are below - don't read them until you have done the test!

Example #1: Attending to a task
Click on this link and after downloading the file, focus on the small blue square in the middle of the screen. Press play and count the number of time the letters bounce off the edge of the wall.

Example #2: Should you focus on the face during kumite?
Often we must decide to focus on the facial features or rather a point more central to the body. In this example, two women are having a conversation relating to their travel woes and hosting a surprise party. Download and play the video. Do you notice anything change?

http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/grafs/demos/11.html

Example #3: Moving into position
Often we may wish to alter the distance so that an attack may proceed or limit the opponent's options. An example that Takahashi Shihan provided at a training session was to slowly move your front leg forward to make your distance for a hand technique and eliminate the opponent's opportunity to use a foot technique. Such slow motion is very effective and can be almost invisible to our visual system. For the two examples below, look at the image and identify the change that is occurring.

Answer #1
You should have counted 12 to 13 letters bouncing off the wall. Did you notice anything else moving across the screen? Go back and play the video.

Answer #2
You should have noticed three distinct changes in the scene. Go back and play the movie again.

Answer #3
You should have noticed the notice board disappearing and the formation of the path in the second example.