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6 Ways to Improve Hand-Eye Coordination
Hand-eye coordination is a person’s ability to perform tasks that necessitate the simultaneous use of the hands and eyes. Hand-eye coordination is a crucial aspect of a person’s quality of life as it is important in many fundamental tasks such as walking, picking things up and writing. Popular eye-hand coordination activities include racket sports such as tennis and ping pong, knitting, playing frisbee, juggling, playing video games and drawing. Keep reading to learn how to improve hand-eye coordination.
Common methods to improve hand-eye coordination include practising with simple activities, practising challenging activities, playing with certain toys, performing reaction time exercises, playing video games and taking up a hobby that requires hand-eye coordination. The 6 ways to improve hand-eye coordination are listed below.
- Start practising with simple activities: To improve your hand-eye coordination, you can start by practising simple activities such as drawing or solving a puzzle.
- Participate in activities that challenge your hand-eye coordination: Hand-eye coordination may be improved by participating in activities that challenge your skills such as different types of sports that require a good level of coordination.
- Play with toys that require hand-eye coordination: To improve and develop hand-eye coordination in children, they can play with toys that work on these skills such as building blocks and shape sorters.
- Increase your response time by performing reaction time exercises: A person can aim to improve their response time by performing reaction time exercises such as a ball drop and ruler test.
- Participate in video games that test both your hand and eye coordination: Participating in video games can be a good way to test both your hand and eye coordination and strengthen these abilities.
- Take up a hobby that requires hand-eye coordination: Hobbies that require hand-eye coordination such as knitting, sewing and juggling can be a good way to improve your skills.
1. Start Practising with Simple Activities
To improve your hand-eye coordination, you can start by practising simple activities. Simple activities that can improve hand-eye coordination include drawing, throwing a frisbee, solving a puzzle or sewing. Playing catch can also be a good way to start practising hand-eye coordination. Simply throwing a ball back and forth with another person is a great way to sharpen your coordination skills as it works on your processing speed and reaction time. If you can’t find something to play catch with, you can practise by throwing a ball against the wall and catching it.
2. Participate in Activities that Challenge Your Hand-Eye Coordination
To improve hand-eye coordination, a person can participate in activities that challenge their skills such as different types of sports that require a high level of coordination. Sports that require good hand-eye coordination include tennis, ping pong, boxing and volleyball. For children, skipping rope can be a challenging but beneficial activity that can improve their hand-eye coordination. Skipping requires a lot of coordination between the body and the eyes, especially if the child is alternating legs.
3. Play With Toys that Require Hand-Eye Coordination
To improve and develop hand-eye coordination in children, they can play with toys that work on these skills. Toys that require hand-eye coordination include building blocks, puzzles, and shape sorters. Hand-eye coordination is extremely important in children as it is crucial in developing the skills they will need in everyday life such as when they are learning to walk and grab objects. These toys will allow children to practise their hand-eye coordination in fun and engaging ways such as stacking blocks on top of each other or trying to sort shapes into matching holes.
4. Increase your Response Time by Performing Reaction Time Exercises
A person can aim to improve their response time by performing reaction time exercises. Reaction time exercises to improve a person’s response time according to Outside Magazine include a ball drop and ruler test. A ball drop involves another person holding two tennis balls out in front of them. You rest your hands on top of theirs and they then drop one ball or both, requiring you to try and catch the ball before it hits the ground. A ruler test requires a second person to hold a ruler in a vertical position out in front of them and you place your thumb and index finger at the bottom of the ruler, without touching. The person then drops the ruler and you have to catch it with your fingers. The lower down you catch the ruler, the faster your reaction time is. There are many different types of reaction time exercises a person can perform to improve response time and hand-eye coordination.
5. Participate in Video Games that Test Both your Hand and Eye Coordination
Participating in video games can be a good way to test both your hand and eye coordination. A 2014 article published in the National Library of Medicine titled, The effect of action video game playing on sensorimotor learning: Evidence from a movement tracking task, found that gamers were better at a manual motion-tracking task than non-gamers. Psychology Today discusses multiple studies that demonstrate a higher level of hand-eye coordination in people who play a significant amount of video games, specifically in driving games and strategy games.
6. Take up a Hobby that Requires Hand-Eye Coordination
There are many hobbies a person can take up that require hand-eye coordination as a way to improve their skills. Hobbies to improve hand-eye coordination include knitting and sewing, juggling and painting. Once you’ve found a hobby that you enjoy, improving your hand-eye coordination will be a fun activity that you are actively seeking out, rather than it being a chore. Knitting and sewing are good hand-eye coordination hobbies as they involve fine motor skills that require a significant amount of focus. Juggling is another great way to improve hand-eye coordination as it involves many moving parts with the body and mind needing to be in sync to execute.
What is Hand-Eye Coordination?
Hand-eye coordination, also known as eye-hand coordination, is a term for a person’s ability to perform activities or tasks that necessitate the simultaneous use of the hands and eyes. According to Cognifit, hand-eye coordination activities involve the eyes directing attention to a stimulus which lets the brain know where it is in space, known as self-perception. The information received by the eyes guides the hands to carry out hand-eye coordination tasks such as racket sports or hobbies like knitting. Hand-eye coordination is very important for a child’s development and is a key element of their ability to do fundamental tasks such as picking things up and walking. A simple example of hand-eye coordination is writing as the eyes send information to the brain about where the hand is situated to produce legible writing.
What More to Know About Hand-Eye Coordination?
It is important to know that hand-eye coordination is affected due to a decline in cognitive function as a person ages, according to the National Library of Medicine. Another fact to know about hand-eye coordination is that it can be categorised into different sub-abilities which are visual-motor integration, visual perception and motor coordination. These different sub-abilities need to be in a normal state for natural and smooth hand-eye coordination.
What are the Benefits of Good Hand-Eye Coordination?
There are many benefits to having good hand-eye coordination with the most important being maintaining quality of life. Hand-eye coordination is necessary for a significant amount of tasks, many of which you might not realise such as brushing your teeth, getting dressed, writing, tying your shoe laces or eating a meal. Hand-eye coordination is also a beneficial and essential aspect of a child’s development including their physical and cognitive development.
What Kind of Exercises can you Perform for Hand-Eye Coordination?
The kind of exercises a person can perform for hand-eye coordination are activities, tasks, hobbies, toys or sports that require a good level of coordination to improve their skills. Certain activities and tasks for hand-eye coordination include juggling, throwing and catching a ball, painting, throwing a frisbee, knitting and swimming. Sports that involve hand-eye coordination include racket sports, basketball, volleyball and boxing.
What Sports are Best for Improving Hand-Eye Coordination?
The sports that are best for improving hand-eye coordination include racket sports such as tennis, badminton and ping pong, volleyball, basketball and boxing. While we do not typically play this sport in Australia, baseball/softball was rated the top sport that requires good hand-eye coordination according to a study by ESPN. These sports involve a high level of hand-eye coordination, usually involving tracking a ball and being quick enough to hit it with specific sports equipment.
What Age is it Possible to Enhance Hand-Eye Coordination?
When a person is young it is the best and most crucial time to develop their hand-eye coordination skills as children need to develop these skills in order to perform everyday tasks such as walking or picking things up. As a person ages, hand-eye coordination naturally declines due to declining cognitive function. Hand-eye coordination in older adults may be enhanced through practising certain exercises according to an article published in the National Library of Medicine titled, Effect of interactive cognitive-motor training on eye-hand coordination and cognitive function in older adults.
Do Medical Conditions Affect Hand-Eye Coordination?
Yes, certain medical conditions can affect a person’s hand-eye coordination. An article published in the National Library of Medicine titled, Eye–Hand Coordination Impairment in Glaucoma Patients, found that those with glaucoma have impaired eye-hand coordination. Another medical condition called dyspraxia can cause poor hand-eye coordination. Dyspraxia is defined by HealthDirect as a neurodevelopmental disorder that causes messages from the brain to the muscles to be interrupted. According to Medical News Today, dyspraxia can cause problems with hand-eye coordination making tasks such as writing, tying shoelaces and catching a ball difficult. Other conditions that affect hand-eye coordination include Parkinson’s disease, ataxia and Multiple Sclerosis.
Does Hand-Eye Coordination Training Increase Cognitive Function?
Yes, hand-eye coordination training may increase cognitive function or stop its decline. According to an article published in the National Library in 2019, the existence of poor hand-eye coordination has been linked to the early stages of cognitive decline caused by the natural ageing process. In the article, the authors studied whether hand-eye coordination training could prevent this decline. They concluded that hand-eye coordination training may delay the decline of cognitive function in older adults. The article also discusses how hand-eye coordination may be enhanced in people of older age through specific exercises which train their hand-eye coordination abilities.