“Proprioception”
...e the control of walking. Proprioception is necessary for learning a type of movement or skill involving muscle Methods Participant The task was to walk to targets that were 3, 6, 9 m (or, use 3, 6, 9 yards) away from a starting position, under three different conditions: (1) the participant walks with eyes open (but looking straight ahead, not down at the target on the floor); (2) the eyes are closed immediately before walking; and (3) the eyes are closed and the participant waits 4 sec before walking. Procedure Using the masking tape, mark a starting position on the floor with an X. Then place a short horizontal strip of tape at each of the three distances from the X along a straight line (at 3, 6, and 9 m away). Follow the table in the Results section of lab report for the ordering of trails and distances to walk. The following instructions should be followed carefully. Before each trial the participant should make a careful survey of the distances of the experimenter. At this point experimenter will say either, “Look straight ahead” (eye-open condition), or “Close your eyes” (eye-closed conditions). Then the experimenter will tell you which of the three targets is the goal on that trail (near, middle or far target). In the case of the eyes open and eyes closed with no delay conditions, the experimenter then tells the participant to start to walk. In the case of the eyes closed with a 4 sec. delay, the experimenter will tell the participant to wait 4 sec, then to begin after timing this period. At all times the goal of the task is to finish with the front edge of the right foot on the goal line. Measure the participants walking accuracy in terms of the absolute distance from the target. Always use the front of the right foot as the reference for determining the error distance from the target. Results In the results, the standard deviation of 3, 6, and 9 was very similar. All of the calculations that were made stayed around 2.3 to 2.7. The average of the standard deviations were 3(open)- 2.3, (closed no delay)- 2....