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Adult participants benefit more from external focus than internal focus when learning a new motor skill. Because learners from different age groups use different learning strategies, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether the effect of attention focus varies among children and adults.

Thirty-four children and 32 adults were randomly assigned to internal or external focus-of-attention practice groups. Throwing darts toward a static target, participants performed 50 acquisition trials, 20 retention trials, and 20 transfer trials.

The results indicate that focus of attention varies between children and adults in accuracy and variability in the acquisition phase and in accuracy in the transfer phase. No interactions were found in the retention phase.

The findings …