Background & Objective: Memory plays a vital role in human learning, which includes encoding, storing and retrieving information. Vision is one of the most important sensory channels through which individuals receive a lot of information and store it in their memory, which is referred to as “visual memory”. Visual memory is almost the main part of all human activities and is very effective in performing and learning motor and sport skills. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of karate on visual memory. Methods: To this end, a number of 64 female students in the range of 12-15 years were selected voluntarily and available. Half of these participants (experimental group) were selected amongst elite karateka girls and the other half (control group) were those who had no history of any sports activities. Elite karateka girls were those who had at least one medal at the provincial, national or international competitions and had at least three regular training sessions a week. Their average experience in karate was 6 years. Kim-Carrad visual memory test was used to collect data. This test is performed in three phases, which evaluates the participants’ sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory, respectively. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to analyze the data. Results: The findings indicated that there was no significant difference between the experimental and control groups in the scores of the first phase of the test. However, the experimental group scored significantly better than the control group in the second and third phases of the test. Discussion: These results suggest that elite karateka girls have significantly stronger short-term and long-term visual memory than their non-athlete counterparts. The results of this study confirm the role of motor activities in memory enhancement.
