Correlation between visuomotor abilities and pistol shooting performance in police trainees

Precision pistol shooting relies on the integration of visual perception and motor execution, yet the visuomotor abilities associated with marksmanship in police trainees remain poorly defined. Shooting-performance data were collected from 100 police trainees undergoing standardized firearms training using a controlled fixed-distance precision-shooting assessment. Visuomotor assessments were completed by 50 participants selected from the upper and lower quartiles of the shooting-score distribution. The assessment battery included visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, reaction time, target capture speed, depth perception, perception span, multiple object tracking, eye–hand coordination, and go/no-go decision making. Pearson correlations, Welch’s independent-samples t-tests, effect sizes (Cohen’s d), and Benjamini–Hochberg false discovery rate correction were applied, with Spearman correlations and Mann–Whitney U tests used as sensitivity analyses. After FDR correction across 27 correlations, only faster dominant-hand reaction time remained significantly associated with higher shooting scores ( r = − 0.453, p = 0.0009, q = 0.025). Right-eye visual acuity, binocular visual acuity, and target capture time showed nominal associations at the unadjusted level but did not survive correction. In the group comparisons, right-eye visual acuity and dominant-hand reaction time remained significant after FDR correction (both q = 0.048), whereas target capture time did not (q = 0.326). The dominant-hand reaction-time association remained significant after controlling for right-eye visual acuity (partial r = − 0.510, q = 0.004). An four-variable regression model explained 40.3% of the in-sample variance in shooting score (adjusted R² = 0.350). Dominant-hand reaction time (β = −0.442, p < 0.001) and right-eye visual acuity (β = −0.303, p = 0.015) retained independent inverse associations, whereas binocular visual acuity and target capture time did not. However, no association remained significant when correlations were examined separately within the high- and low-score groups. Dominant-hand reaction time therefore represented the most robust finding, while the visual-acuity and target-capture findings were less consistent across analyses and should be interpreted cautiously in the context of the extreme-group sampling design.