Is proprioception important for skilled performance?
Two broad accounts of how we may have knowledge of the direction and extent of our own movements in the absence of exteroceptive feedback are sketched. The proprioceptive (inflow) model states that feedback signals to the central nervous system are compared to some central record of efference. The central monitoring of efference (outflow) model states that the central record of itself provides sufficient displacement information to time further efferent events. Physiological and human performance studies are critically reviewed and evidence favoring the commonly assumed inflow model is shown to be inadequate. The outflow model provides a more parsimonious explanation.
a Department of Psychology , University of Waterloo.
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