Development of visuomotor integration in learning to grasp a moving ball

Specificity of visuomotor maps mas investigated in the acquisition of a tas k of grasping a moving ball. Performance mas initially assessed in four vis ual conditions of full vision, visual occlusion of 100 msec., 200 msec., an d 300 msec. preceding contact between the ball and hand. During acquisition one group practiced under full vision and another one with visual occlusio n 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 v isual conditions. The analysis of proportion of prehensions and movement ki nematics indicated that practice in either experimental condition resulted in transfer to performance in different visual conditions.