20 subjects, aged 11 to 21 yr., skilled in competitive swimming in both the crawl and the breaststroke, performed a total of 8 timed swimming trials of 25 yd. in both strokes both with and without blindfolds to test the hypothesis that the loss in performance which would occur with loss of visual feedback is related to the complexity of the motor skill being performed. After correction for differences in the speed of each stroke, the loss in speed (performance decrement) in the more complex stroke (crawl) was significantly greater than the decrement in the less complex (breast) stroke.
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