When kicking a ball into a goal, those who hit more successfully estimate the goal to be bigger than those who hit less successfully. Recent evidence indicates that directing visual attention towards the target may be a prerequisite for the relationship between performance and target size to emerge. If true, then instructions directing visual attention to the target should affect this relationship differently than instructions directing attention towards movement execution. To test this, 28 participants performed a kicking task and afterwards estimated the size of the target in two instruction conditions: a target-directed instruction condition and a movement-directed instruction condition. Comparison of the correlation coefficients (number of successful hits by estimated target size) revealed a significant difference (Z=2.168, p=.030) between the target-directed instructions (r=.248) and movement-directed instructions (r=-.141). Our results confirm that target-directed and movement-directed instructions differentially affect the relationship between performance and perceived target size.
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