Strength and limitations
This study was the first to explore the potential benefits of learning strategies promoting external focus of attention, as well learners’ autonomy and self-regulation. Although the results failed to identify significant short-term performance and learning effects, it provided a template to implement similar studies with extended learning and assessment periods. Allowing students to design, within a given learning template, their practice schedule and the nature and timing of feedback, may still be beneficial if properly integrated in the teaching curriculum.One limitation of the study was the restricted number of trials per condition, which may have affected the overall precision and variability of the data, and potentially contributed to the lack of differences between the groups. Blocks of 3 trials were chosen to encourage participation within the teaching environment, and to limit the possible sequence effects due to online learning (change in mean performance due to trial repetition). Finally, short-term learning studies have been used to explore the potential of learning strategies that could be implemented over a longer period of time, and their results should be interpreted with caution. The effects of long-term feedback and force target estimation training strategies remains to be investigated.