Mental effort (intensity of attention) in elite sports has remained a debated topic and a challenging phenomenon to measure. Thus, a quasi-ecological laboratory study was conducted to investigate mental effort in elite rowers as compared with a group of nonelites. Findings suggest that eye-tracking measures—specifically, blink rates and pupil size—can serve as valid indicators of mental effort in physically demanding sport tasks. Furthermore, findings contradict the notion that elite athletes spend less cognitive effort than their lower-level peers. Specifically, elites displayed similar levels of self-reported effort and performance decrement with increasing mental load and significantly more mental effort overall as measured by pupil-size increase (relative to baseline) during rowing trials as compared with the nonelites in the sample. Future studies on eye tracking in sports may include investigations of mental effort in addition to selective attention during physically demanding tasks.

精英运动中的精神努力（注意力强度）仍然是一个有争议的话题，也是一个难以衡量的现象。因此，进行了一项准生态实验室研究，以调查精英赛艇运动员与一组非精英运动员的脑力消耗情况。研究结果表明，眼球追踪测量——特别是眨眼频率和瞳孔大小——可以作为体力要求较高的运动任务中脑力消耗的有效指标。此外，研究结果与精英运动员比低水平运动员花费更少的认知努力的观点相矛盾。具体来说，与样本中的非精英相比，精英在赛艇试验期间表现出相似的自我报告努力程度和成绩下降，并随着精神负荷的增加而显着增加，根据瞳孔大小增加（相对于基线）衡量，整体精神努力显着增加。未来对运动中眼动追踪的研究除了在体力要求较高的任务期间选择性注意之外，还可能包括对精神努力的研究。