The Effect of Visual Guidance on the Acquisition of a Simple Motor Task

Abstract

Subjects were required to learn to depress a bar using concurrent visual feedback, which was removed for test. The overshooting found in test is attributed to visual dominance of the feedback traces; the way in which it occurs is not clear, since the reduction of the ratio of movement to display gain from 1:15 to 1:7.5 did not reduce overshooting. Performance improved after extended practice, but the direction of error remained positive. The results are discussed in terms of motor programming and feedback control of movement and are interpreted as evidence against Adams’ (1971) two-trace theory.