Do Perceptual Instructions Lead to Enhanced Performance Relative to Behavioral Instructions?

ABSTRACT

As people we commonly instruct people in terms of physical actions to carry out to perform any task. However, according to perceptual control theory (Powers, 1973), human action serves to control perception. Using a drawing task, it was hypothesized that instructions describing the perceivable effects of the movement would result in greater accuracy of image drawing than those describing the movement. Participants were asked to draw images using different instructions; describing the expected perceptions and describing the movements. As predicted, it was found that describing the perceptual outcome of the task led to significantly more accurate drawings than describing the movements did. This highlights the importance of instructions based on desired perceptions when precise execution of a skill is necessary.

Keywords:

• action
• control theory
• motor
• perception
• skill performance