Misalignment Between Perceived and Actual Ability on a Balance Beam Walking Task

Effective balance control is necessary for stability, but it is an individual's self-perceived balance ability that determines movement selection. Accurate self-estimations of balance are therefore essential to ensure that movement choices align with capability. This study examined collegiate athletes' perceptions of their balance ability on a clinically standardized Narrowing Beam Walking Task to examine (1) their initial perceptions of ability, and (2) how task experience improves the accuracy of self-perceived balance. Self-estimates of performance were taken at baseline (before trials), early-training (after two trials), and post-training (after a further eight trials). Actual task performance was quantified using the final eight trials. At baseline, athletes poorly estimated their ability: individuals with poorer performance tended to overestimate while higher-performing individuals underestimated. With practice, absolute estimate error decreased, indicating that task-specific exposure brought self-estimates into closer alignment to actual performance. These effects were consistent across sporting disciplines with varying balance demands, showing that effective balance control and frequent engagement in similar, but unrelated tasks, does not facilitate accurate self-perceptions of balance. Instead, task-specific exposure was required to refine balance estimates. These findings have implications for testing and rehabilitation in populations whose misjudgments of balance are associated with negative outcomes, such as falls.