Defense of Miquel Moreno's PhD thesis on the hand-eye laterality profile and its impact on sports performance
The UAB Doctoral School has hosted the defense of Miquel Moreno's PhD thesis, which introduces the Hand-Eye Laterality Profile (HELP) protocol to analyze the relationship between ocular and manual preference and technical execution in high-level tennis.
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The thesis confirms the relationship between the hand-eye laterality profile and sports performance.
The researcher from the PhD Program in Sports Sciences at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona analyzes in this thesis the relationship between hand-eye laterality profiles and sports performance, providing new evidence regarding their distribution and influence on the performance and technique of high-level tennis players. Furthermore, it establishes a new, valid, and reliable methodological framework for the study of this area of knowledge.
The project features a strong applied focus by gathering hypotheses and information widely disseminated in training fields, subjecting them to the scientific method through a systematic review and experimental studies, and subsequently transferring the generated knowledge to the training of sports professionals. This knowledge transfer has materialized in educational interventions and workshops aimed at tennis coaches and the goalkeeper coaching staff at F.C. Barcelona, as well as in the publication of the book "Nuevas tendencias en el entrenamiento del tenis: modelo basado en la acción de juego".
The Carles Perelló Hall at the Doctoral School of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona hosted the PhD thesis defense entitled "Efectes del perfil de lateralitat oculomanual en el rendiment esportiu", conducted by Miquel Moreno Moreno. This research work was supervised by Lluís Capdevila and Josep Maria Losilla, senior researchers at IRE-UAB and members of the UAB Department of Psychology. The defense took place on Wednesday, July 15 at 11:30 a.m. in an in-person format.
The doctoral research was structured as a compendium of articles, with the central objective of analyzing the role of hand-eye laterality (the combination of hand and eye specialization) in sports performance, focusing specifically on high-level tennis. Given the lack of methodological standardization in this field of sports science, Moreno proposed the Hand-Eye Laterality Profile (HELP) concept as an integrative framework. Based on this model, the study developed a specific assessment protocol, verifying its reliability and establishing clear classification criteria to define homogeneous and cross-laterality profiles.
To obtain empirical data, the study analyzed a sample of 173 tennis players selected by the Catalan Tennis Federation. Through this group of participants, the prevalence of different laterality profiles was examined, along with their direct connection to technical elements of play, such as body posture and footwork support during dynamic court movement. The examination board evaluating the thesis consisted of Ernest Baiget Vidal, from the Institut Nacional d'Educació Física de Catalunya, Sonia Lorente Sánchez, from UAB, and Joshua Colomar Axup, from the Universitat de Vic.
With this defense, the PhD program in Sports Sciences promoted by IRE-UAB, initiated in the 2022-23 academic year, reached a milestone by graduating its first doctoral student.