As a pilot study of the adaptation of VR in boccia players with disabilities, this study aimed to investigate whether the use of VR in throwing training of boccia with healthy adults had an acute effect on throwing accuracy and psychological performance.
Twenty healthy men and 6 women with no boccia experience participated in this study and were randomly divided into VR and non-VR groups. To assess throwing accuracy, participants performed underhand throws of boccia balls for targets placed at three distances: 2 m (short), 5 m (middle), and 9 m (long). The VR group trained during watching VR videos, while the non-VR group trained without them, and both groups threw 3 balls for each distance. The VR videos showed accurate throwing motion from a first-person view using a 360° camera (Insta 360 ONE X2, Shenzhen Arashi Vision, China). Throwing accuracy, calculated as the distance from the ball to the target (cm), was measured pre-and post-training. Confidence was assessed using a visual analog scale pre-and post-training. A two-way ANOVA was conducted on throwing accuracy and confidence with group and time as factors.
Regarding throwing accuracy, a significant main effect of time was found in the middle, and post-hoc tests showed that both groups improved after training (pre-training: 52.6 ± 15.9 cm, post-training: 36.3 ± 13.9 cm, p0.05). No significant change was found between pre- and post-training in the short (p=0.15). There was a significant interaction in the long, with the non-VR group improved throwing accuracy compared with the VR group (p0.05). Confidence showed a significant main effect of time, with both groups improving after training compared to pre-training (pre-training: 37.3 ± 13.9 mm, post-training: 51.3 ± 16.6 mm, p0.01).
The VR group learned more accurate movement patterns by visually recognizing the throwing motion's trajectory from the VR video in the middle. The simulated experience of success may have improved throwing accuracy and confidence. In contrast, the non-VR group received visual feedback from the ball trajectories during training, improving their throwing accuracy and confidence. The lack of improvement of throwing accuracy in the short and long may have been influenced by task difficulty and depth misrecognition, a limitation of VR videos.
Throwing training of boccia using VR has the potential to provide acute training benefits comparable to traditional training for anyone, anywhere. In the future, the effectiveness of training using VR needs to be examined for boccia players, including those with disabilities.
Boccia
Throwing accuracy
