The Interaction of Overt and Covert Attention of Children During Performing a Targeting Task

Abstract

It has been shown in various researches that the focus of attention and quiet eye duration (QED) are effective variables on the performance of targeting tasks. However, the impact of these variables on motor skills in children needs more research; Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of different attentional focus instruction on QED and accuracy of children's darts throwing. Participants such as twelve right handed children (age: M=8.83, SD=0.79) without dart throwing experience participated in the study; while their eyes movements were recorded by an eye tracker system, participants performed 18 dart throws (6 blocks of 3 trials) under three different attentional conditions: 1) an external focus, 2) an internal focus, and 3) control conditions. The result showed that effect of focus of attention was significant neither for accuracy nor for QED. Therefore, in order to be aware of the optimal focus of children, more research is needed in various motor tasks.