Journal of Sports and Motor Development and Learning
Scientific Journal

The Effect of Visual Illusion on Learning Dart Throwing Skills in Beginners

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

Authors

Mahdi Rahzani 1
Jalil Moradi 2

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.

https://doi.org/10.22059/jsmdl.2024.385118.1810
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.

Keywords

Dart Throwing
Visual Illusion
Adolescents
Motor Learning
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Journal of Sports and Motor Development and Learning
Volume 17, Issue 4
Autumn 2025
Pages 39-52

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