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The main purposes of this study were (a) to compare the effects of mental imagery combined with physical practise and specific physical practise on the retention and transfer of a closed motor skill in young children; (b) to determine the mental imagery (visual vs. kinesthetic), which is the most efficient for retention and transfer of a closed motor skill; and (c) to verify the relationship between movement image vividness and motor performance. As for the secondary purpose, it was to compare the effects of gender on motor learning. Participants (n = 96) were selected from 3 primary schools. These participants were divided into 6 groups and submitted to different experimental conditions. The experimental task required the participants to throw, with the nondominant hand (left hand), a ball toward a target composed of 3 concentric circles. The results demonstrated that performance obtained by the mental imagery (visual or kinesthetic) combined with physical practise group was, during the retention phase, equivalent to that produced by the specific physical practise group but significantly superior during the transfer of closed motor skill. These results showed the potential benefits of mental imagery as a retention strategy intended for motor skills and performance enhancement. Such results could be explained by the similarity of 3 principal functional evidences shared by mental and physical practise: behavioural, central, and peripheral (as suggested by Holmes & Collins, 2001).
Keywords: mental imagery, kinesthetic imagery, visual imagery, motor performance, retention
The effects of training strategies on the acquisition of motor and cognitive skills have occupied a very privileged place of interest amongst the teachers, researchers, and theorists of motor learning and performance (Adams, 1971, 1992; Famose, 1987, 1991; Hall, Bernoties, & Schmidt, 1995; Murphy & Martin, 2002; Schmidt & Lee, 2005; Shapiro & Schmidt, 1982; Weinberg & Gould, 2003). Gallwey (1974) and Adams (1971, 1976) suggested that specific physical practise organised in identical environmental condition represented the best training strategy for the mastery of movements. More specifically, in his closed loop theory, Adams (1971) stipulated that execution of any single movement requires the presence of two traces; the "perceptual trace," which represents a recognition mechanism allowing the control of the movement precision and the "mnemonic trace," which refers to a recall mechanism permitting the selection and...