Effects of stroboscopic visual training on reaction time and decision-making ability in athletes: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Introduction This systematic review and meta-analysis investigated the impact of stroboscopic vision training on athletes’ reaction and decision-making ability, and examined the moderating role of key factors. Methods Literature searches were conducted in five databases: PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, EBSCO and Scopus. Two researchers independently screened the articles and extracted the data. The risk of bias in the included studies was evaluated using the Cochrane risk of bias assessment tool. Statistical analysis was conducted using Stata 18.0 software. Meta-analysis employed a random-effects model to analyze reaction time and decision-making ability, respectively. Subgroup analysis studied the moderating effects of participants’ age, sport experience, sport type, stroboscopic frequency, duty cycle, total intervention duration, weeks of intervention, intervention frequency and per session intervention duration. A total of 9 articles were included in the systematic review and meta-analysis, involving 323 athletes. Results Studies have shown that stroboscopic vision training has a significant impact on the improvement of reaction time (SMD = −0.82, 95% CI: −1.42, −0.22, p = 0.007), but has no significant effect on decision-making ability (SMD = 0.51, 95% CI: −0.09, −1.11, p = 0.09). Subgroup analysis indicates that stroboscopic training for 1 to 6 weeks, with 1 to 2 sessions per week and 10 min of high-quality training each time, is an excellent training program for optimizing athletes’ reaction ability. Duty cycles of less than 10 Hz and less than 50% are more beneficial for improving athletes’ reaction ability (SMD = −1.38, p < 0.05; SMD = −1.38, p < 0.05). Strobe training has different effects on different sports types, and the performance of open skill athletes (SMD = −0.60, p < 0.05) was significantly better than that of closed skill athletes (SMD = −2.02, p > 0.05). The cognitive performance of adolescent athletes under the age of 18 improved to a certain extent after stroboscopic training (SMD = −0.32, p = 0.05). The study suggests that stroboscope training has little impact on decision-making ability. Only training experience (≥7.5 years: SMD = −3.9, p < 0.001) and short training time (≤10 min: SMD = −3.9, p < 0.001) have positive effects on decision-making ability. Discussion Based on this, these findings provide certain evidence for researchers and coaches, which can assist them in conducting stroboscopic training. However, due to the limitation of a small research sample size, further studies on optimizing stroboscopic training schemes are needed in the future to maximize the cognitive performance of athletes. Systematic review registration CRD42023418594, https://www.prisma-statement.org/prisma-2020 .