The effect of apparatus use on athletes' attention performance in sports branches playing with ball: pilot study

Aim: It was aimed that the comparison of the attention of hockey, handball and sedantary persons in this study. Methods: A total of 87 participants including 52 players (23 hockey, 29 handball) and 35 sedentary who attended to the middle school in Gaziantep and had a mean age of 13.53±0.59, participated voluntarily. D2 attention test was applied to participants. The validity and reliability of D2 test were conducted for athletes and sedentary in Turkey. In addition, a mini-questionnaire was applied by researchers to determine their demographic characteristics. The Shapiro-Wilk test was examined for normal distributions. Kruskal Wallis test was used for comparisons. Results: It was observed that hockey and handball players played regularly (3.00±0.00 days a week and 2.00±0.00 hour a day). The average sporting age of the hockey players was 3.30±0.77 years whereas the handball players were 2.48±5.00 years. Sedentary individuals were seen not to participate in an activity regularly. When the mean scores of all the groups regarding the selective and sustained attention are examined; Total Number of Items, Total Number of Errors and Concentration Performance were better than those of sedentary. But, there is no significant difference was found between hockey (use of apparatus) and handball players(non-use of apparatus). Conclusion: We can emphasize that the use of apparatus in sports branches has no effect on attention performance of athletes