Hitting the bullseye: unique kinematic strategies emerge from acquiring a novel skill in a virtual environment

Virtual reality (VR) is currently increasing in popularity as a medium for motor skill training, particularly in the areas of occupational skills and motor rehabilitation. However, there is still debate as to how well motor skills learned in a virtual environment transfer to the real world due to perceptual-motor differences between the two performance settings. The initial results of the study indicate that, for a dart-throwing task, novices who train in VR acquire different kinematic throwing patterns but exhibit similar real-world task performance outcomes compared to novices who learned the skill in the real world.