Motor Training without Vision - Kinesthetic Feedback

Psychological Research published a study where the experimental group had visual experience directly manipulated during practice.  The participants practiced throwing darts to 3 specific areas of a dartboard.

The results showed the following:

1.  the experimental group trained without vision of their action, only feedback about the final landing position, significantly improved in their ability to predict the landing position of a thrown dart, from temporally occluded video clips.

2.  the performance of this ‘no-vision’ group did not differ from a full-vision group

3.  the 'no-vision' group was significantly more accurate than an observation-only and a no-practice control group

4.  the observation-only and no-practice group did not show improvment pre- to post-practice

The researchers concluded this study suggests that motor experience specifically regulates the perceptual prediction of action outcomes.

Reference:  Mulligan, D. & Hodges, N. Throwing in the dark: improved prediction of action outcomes following motor training without vision of the action. Psychological Research
September 2014, Volume 78, Issue 5, pp 692-704.

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Now You See It, Now You Don't includes 20 worksheets to practice kinesthetic skills without visual input. Some children rely too much on the visual system when completing visual motor activities. These worksheets encourage a child to use his/her kinesthetic sense (where the body is in space) to complete a visual motor task rather than relying on the visual system.  Find out more at http://yourtherapysource.com/nowyousee.html