Document Type : Research Paper I Open Access I Released under CC BY-NC 4.0 license

Authors

1 Department of Motor behavior and sports psychology, Faculty of Sport Sciences, Arak University, Arak, Iran

2 Department of Motor Behavior and Sport psychology , Faculty of Sport Sciences, Arak University, Arak, Iran.

Abstract

Introduction: Vision is one of the most important senses in learning motor skills, and in this regard, the role of visual illusion is very important; therefore, this research was conducted to investigate the effect of visual illusion on learning dart-throwing skills in beginners.
Methods: The participants included 20 teenagers with an average age of 17 years, who were selected through convenience sampling from the population of secondary school students. After the pre-test, the participants were assigned to two groups: experimental (modified darts with visual illusion) and control (normal darts). Both groups performed 10 practice sessions. Immediately after the practice sessions, the post-test was administered; two hours after the post-test, the immediate retention and transfer tests were conducted; and one week later, the delayed retention and transfer tests were carried out. For data analysis, mixed-design analysis of variance and Bonferroni's post hoc test were used.
Results: The results showed that in both the experimental and control groups, a significant improvement was observed in dart-throwing performance from the pre-test to the post-test (p < 0.05). However, comparison between the experimental and control groups showed no significant difference between the two groups in all phases of acquisition, retention, and transfer.
Conclusion: In general, the results showed that perceiving the target as larger does not affect the performance and learning of dart-throwing skills and probably does not influence the motor control system. It is suggested that the effect of visual illusion needs to be investigated under new conditions in future research.

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