ORIGINAL ARTICLE The specificity of practice hypothesis in goal-directed movements: visual dominance or proprioception neglect? Lucette Toussaint 1 • Aurore Meugnot 1 • Arnaud Badets 2 • David Chesnet 3 • Luc Proteau 4 Received: 27 July 2015 / Accepted: 28 January 2016 / Published online: 12 February 2016 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016 Abstract The study aimed to examine whether modify- ing the proprioceptive feedback usually associated with a specific movement would decrease the dominance of visual feedback and/or decrease, which appears to be the neglect of proprioceptive feedback in ensuring the accuracy of goal-directed movements. We used a leg positioning recall task and measured the recall error after 15 and 165 acquisition trials performed with both vision and proprio- ception or proprioception only, under either a normal or a modified proprioception condition (i.e., with a 1-kg load attached to the participants’ ankle). Participant learning was evaluated in transfer with proprioception only. In support of the specificity of practice hypothesis, the recall errors in acquisition were significantly smaller when practice occurred with both vision and proprioception, in either the loaded or the unloaded leg condition, and they increased significantly in transfer when vision was with- drawn. An important finding of the study highlighted that withdrawing vision after 165 acquisition trials had less deleterious effects on the recall errors when practice occurred under the loaded leg condition. Under that modified condition, recall errors in transfer were similar when practice occurred with and without vision, whereas larger errors were observed following practice with vision under the normal proprioceptive condition. Overall, these results highlighted the dominance of vision in ensuring accurate leg positioning recall and revealed that the dom- inance of vision is such that the processing of proprio- ceptive feedback may be neglected. Importantly, modifying the proprioceptive feedback has the advantage of reducing what appears to be the neglect of propriocep- tive information when movement execution occurs in a visuo-proprioceptive context. Practical considerations for rehabilitation are discussed at the end of the manuscript. Introduction Physical practice leads to the development of sensorimotor representations that facilitate motor performance. Deter- mining the source(s) of afferent information used to ensure movement accuracy is important, from both a theoretical (see Proteau, 1992, for references to various models) and a practical point of view. For example, in patients suffering from upper and lower limb injury, rehabilitation practi- tioners want to know how to best help their patients regain movement control and ensure the accuracy of goal-directed movements. The current experimental study can give some information to help practitioners to determine specific rehabilitation programs. The specificity of practice hypothesis (Proteau, 1992; Proteau, Marteniuk, Girouard & Dugas, 1987; Proteau, Tremblay & De Jaeger, 1997; Tremblay & Proteau, 1998) suggests that learning is specific to the source of afferent information that is more likely to ensure optimal accuracy. It was proposed that through practice, one quickly & Lucette Toussaint lucette.toussaint@univ-poitiers.fr; http://cerca.labo.univ-poitiers.fr 1 Universite ´ de Poitiers, Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition et l’Apprentissage, CeRCA, CNRS/UMR 7295, 5 rue The ´odore Lefebvre, 86000 Poitiers, France 2 CNRS, Institut de Neurosciences Cognitives et Inte ´gratives d’Aquitaine (UMR 5287), Universite ´ de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France 3 Maison des Sciences de l’Homme et de la Socie ´te ´ (MSHS, USR 3565), Poitiers, France 4 De ´partement de kine ´siologie, Universite ´ de Montre ´al, Quebec, Canada 123 Psychological Research (2017) 81:407–414 DOI 10.1007/s00426-016-0748-3