Development of visuomotor integration in learning to grasp a moving ball

Specificity of visuomotor maps was investigated in the acquisition of a task of grasping a moving ball. Performance was initially assessed in four visual conditions of full vision, visual occlusion of 100 msec., 200 msec., and 300 msec. preceding contact between the ball and hand. During acquisition one group practiced under full vision and another one with visual occlusion of 300 msec. A posttest was performed with the same visual conditions as the pretest, and in a subsequent transfer phase the groups reversed their visual conditions. The analysis of proportion of prehensions and movement kinematics indicated that practice in either experimental condition resulted in transfer to performance in different visual conditions.