Focus and calm in young archers: Aydin 2023 study

Five young archers from Trabzon, three girls and two boys aged 11 to 16, shot 21 arrows at 18 metres wearing a consumer EEG headband that outputs two indices, one for attention and one for calm. The authors then related these indices to the score of each arrow.

Of the 105 arrows, 81 were kept, because 24 did not meet the normality criteria the analysis required. On the remaining 81 the score rises with attention (r = 0.335) and with calm (r = 0.392); taken together, the two indices account for 24.4% of the variation in score, with calm weighing slightly more. The girls averaged 5.76 points per arrow against 4.47 for the boys (p = 0.029), while age and school level made no difference. The authors conclude that when attention and calm go up, so does the score.

Measurements were taken during the 2020-2021 school year in a hall set aside for archery at the Beşirli tennis courts in Trabzon. The archers had up to three years of experience; one was at middle school and four at secondary school. After warming up, each shot two ends of three arrows to set the sight, then seven ends of three at 18 metres, which were recorded.

The device is a MindWave Mobile 2, a headband with a single dry electrode on the forehead and a reference clip on the earlobe, which turns the signal into two values from 0 to 100 called attention and meditation, using a manufacturer's algorithm the paper does not describe. It does not say how the value was matched to each arrow, that is, over which time window it was taken. The type of bow is not given. The analysis uses Pearson correlations, a multiple regression, a t-test for sex and school level and an analysis of variance for age.

The sample is five children, but the analysis treats every arrow as an independent observation: the correlations on 81 arrows mix differences between archers with differences between one arrow and the next from the same archer, and there is no way to tell which drives the link. The comparison between girls and boys is in practice a comparison between three people and two. Dropping 24 of 105 arrows for failing a normality check is a choice that can shift the result, and it is not known which arrows went.

Despite the title, there is no neurofeedback: the archers did not receive the signal or train to change it; the device only recorded. Attention and calm indices from a single-electrode consumer headband are not a validated measure in this setting. Some numbers do not add up: the regression coefficients (about 5 points per unit of index) are not compatible with a 0 to 100 scale, and for the 16-year-olds the text gives 4.78 points while the table gives 5.78. The paper states one to three years of experience in the methods and 0.1 to three in the English abstract.

For anyone who shoots, the study adds little to what most archers already sense: on the better arrows of these five children the headband's indices were slightly higher. The link is modest, and with such a small sample and arrows treated as if they were different people, it cannot say whether attention brings the score, whether a good shot calms the archer, or simply whether those who shoot better also show higher values. It is no argument for buying an EEG headband for training or for following its numbers, and it does not concern neurofeedback proper, which was not tested here.