Mental practice enhances recruit police officers’ acquisition of critical psychomotor skills

Mental practice is a method for acquiring, rehearsing or enhancing a physical skill without using fine or gross motor movements. Experiments were made on 72 student police volunteers at the University of Illinois. Participants were allowed to evaluate their own mental images of firearm skills. Shows that treatment and control groups have practical and statistically significant differences in gain scores. Demonstrates that belief in the efficacy of mental practice is a key to high scoring.