Facilitation of visual perception through voluntary movement in elementary school children

The effects of active movement involvement with visual perception in children were studied in two situations. In Exp. I 15 elementary school children were assigned to each of the three experimental conditions. In all conditions subjects were presented with a standard visual length. In Condition I (visual) they viewed the distance between two stops on a rail. In Condition II (active movement) the subject moved his arm through the viewed length. In Condition III (passive movement) the experimenter moved the subject's arm passively through the viewed length. The experimenter then adjusted a visual variable (in the absence of the standard) until the subject judged it to be as long as the standard. The active movement condition was significantly more accurate than the other two conditions which did not differ significantly. In Exp. II 12 elementary school children were assigned to visual, active movement, and passive movement conditions. Stimulus and test materials were six-sided random forms. Results closely paralleled findings for Exp. I, significantly more errors being made in the visual and passive movement conditions. The implications of the results for understanding intersensory facilitation effects and perceptual learning are discussed and I argue that the results make feasible a mechanism of specific intersensory connections via the motor cortex in intersensory facilitation.