Abstract
The existence of residual and unnecessary muscle tension has been implicated as a detrimental influence on motor performance and motor skill learning. A method for reducing muscle tension has been provided by the EMG biofeedback training. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of frontal and agonist, biceps b., EMG biofeedback techniques on motor performance. Twelve male university students were matched by the motor performance and then randomly assigned to three groups. All subjects were administered the visual compensatory tracking at pre-and post-test. CG subjects were administered the same task at conditioning blocks as pre- and post-test. But EGI subjects received auditory feedback of frontal EMG level and were reinforced for decreasing the tension level during visual compensatory tracking. EGII subjects received auditory feedback of biceps b. EMG level during visual compensatory tracking at conditioning blocks and were also reinforced for maintaining the optimal tension level. Analysis of covariance of pre- and post-test difference means in integrated tracking error representing motor performance indicated that EGII subjects showed significantly lower improvement in comparison with the other two groups. There was no significant difference in itegrated error between EGI and CG. These results suggest that the frontal EMG biofeedback technique is more effective than agonist, biceps b., EMG biofeedback technique for improving motor performance. There was no definitive evidence that the frontal EMG biofeedback reducing muscle tension influenced muscle tension level for biceps b. and vice versa. However the possibility of such a generalization still exists because of getting lowerer frontal EMG level in EGII.
