Attention to visual and kinesthetic components of skills

Abstract

The performance of skilled movements gives rise to several sources of feedback. It is important to determine whether and at what level these cues are used. This article considers their use at the highest level of conscious control. Several experimental techniques are outlined to investigate the role of attention in the processing of visual and kinesthetic cues during the acquisition, initiation and control of movements. The mere presence of a visual pattern disrupts the acquisition of a kinesthetic pattern, while the presence of a kinesthetic pattern does not affect the acquisition of a visual pattern unless the subject is forced to attend the kinesthetic information. In the initiation of simple movements, kinesthetic cues seem to be ignored when visual cues are present, even though this delays the initiation. These results support the view that vision dominates kinesthesis at the level of central attention. Attentional mechanisms are involved in the initiation and control of discrete movements. Within the context of a continuous tracking task anticipated corrections appear to demand more attention than those which are not anticipated.