Supplementary Visual Stimuli and Rotary Pursuit Performance

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Abstract
The effect of supplementary visual stimuli on rotary pursuit (RP) performance was evaluated in two experiments. In Exp. I a modified RP display presented target rotation within a visual guiding ring ( VG) to one group of 15 Ss, and a standard unguided RP display ( UG) to another ( n = 45 Ss). Subgroups of 15 Ss each were transferred from UG to VG after 20 trials (6.67 min. of practice) and after 33 trials (11 min. of practice). VG led to poorer performance after 33 trials at 60 rpm. Transfer from UG to VG led to loss in proficiency, early transfer producing a three times greater proficiency loss. Exp. II was conducted with 120 Ss to detemine whether the VG display possessed a distracting effect on a photoelectric RP task performed by 20 Ss each at 60, 70, and 80 rpm and compared with performance by a like number of Ss on task UG. The results confirm that VG produced poorer performance at 60 rpm after 10 min. of practice (30 20-sec. trials) although early VG performance was superior. VG was superior to UG performance at 70 and 80 rpm over all trials. It was concluded that visual stimuli which supplement the optical events of target motion can aid performance initially at 60 rpm and for a longer period at more rapid rates of rotation but probably retard the development of learning this skill.

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