Open vs Closed Loop Control Process

In Motor Behavior lab this week we played a variety of games that involved Open-Loop control process and Closed-Loop control process.  It took me awhile to understand the concept between the two and I think I now have a grasp of the concept.  Open-Loop control process has either no feedback or the subject has no immediate control to correct the feedback.  Closed-Loop control process does have feedback and the subject can use that feedback to make corrections based on their movements.  We had four activities that we experimented with to help us understand the open and closed loop processes.  The first activity was called Tracking Tasks (mirror tracing), and the point of this task was to trace a star  -Kinesthesiometer-                                        looking pattern with your arm not touching the table and only using a mirror to see your hand and a plate to block the visual pathway directly to the hand that is tracing the pattern.  What was measured here was the amount of times you left the pattern while tracing, this was calculated as an error.  This activity is an example of a closed-loop control process because there is feedback with the mirror and it can be corrected by the subject.  The second activity was called slow positioning task, this was a device that allowed you to rest your arm on a platform and then a partner would move your arm a to a certain spot and then put the arm back to the starting point and the subject would have to see If they can get their arm back to that spot while they have their eyes closed the whole time.  This is an open-loop control process and closed-looped because there were two trails one was fast and one was slow, the fast one is suppose to be open loop because there is not enough time to receive feedback and correct, there is more instant action in moving the arm, while on the other hand the slow trial is closed looped because the subject receives feedback through the time by sensing the muscles in the shoulder and being able to fine tune their response.  The last two activities were Scoop Toss and Ring Toss both of these activities are open-loop because there is feedback with the Scoop Toss when the object is thrown however there is no way for the subject to correct anything when the ball is in the air, same reasoning goes for the ring toss when defining it as open-loop. However the difference between these two activities is that the scoop toss has a catching portion to it and when someone is catching the ball it is closed loop because there is feedback with the ball moving and spinning and the subject can easily move to catch the ball based off of the feedback.