Third study of my PhD project published in 2016. This added the perceptual point of view to our prior work, and thus complemented our perceptual-cognitive approach to motor learning as induced by motor imagery, see here.
Thus, in the present study, combined mental and physical practice led to both formation of mental representations in long-term memory and longer quiet eye durations. Interestingly, the length of the quiet eye directly related to the degree of elaborateness of the underlying mental representation, supporting the notion that the quiet eye reflects cognitive processing. This study is the first to show that the quiet eye becomes longer in novices practicing a motor action. Moreover, the findings of the present study suggest that perceptual and cognitive adaptations co-occur over the course of motor learning.