Does Metric Feedback Hinder Actions Guided by Cognition?

Abstract

Providing trainees with metric feedback improves their metric distance estimations, but doing so also hinders certain actions. This paper describes a possible explanation for this hindrance. Based on that explanation, it was predicted that metric feedback should not hinder actions that are guided by cognitive processing, i.e., actions guided by the ventral visual system. To investigate this possibility, participants threw underhanded to specific metric distances during Pre and Post-Testing, e.g., throwing an object so that it came to rest 30 feet away. During the intervening Training, participants generated verbal distance estimates. Half received metric feedback. The results indicated that throws improved from Pre to Post-Test, but only when participants received metric feedback during Training. This outcome supports our hypothesis. Moreover, it suggests that trainees must know whether their distance estimation training should be applied to untrained tasks. Doing so may benefit certain tasks. Others, however, may suffer from it.