Though I tend to bring this question up to Rick Fielding at my next lesson, I wanted to toss it out to any Mudcatters too.

When learning a new tune, after being shown where to place my fingers on the fret board, I find it much easier to learn the tune by not looking at the fret board and just feeling where my fingers should go.
I tend to keep my eyes focused on my right hand while picking. This helps improve my picking technique.
But the minute I start looking at my left hand, I start making mistakes. I do not make mistakes with my right hand picking, I make mistakes with my left hand positioning when I look at what I am doing.

I could force myself to learn to play the tune while looking at where my left hand fingers are on the fret board but it feels like I would then be adding one more additional skill to learn on top of all the rest.

This seems to only happen when I am shown a new tune. If I am trying to figure out a tune by myself, I do look at my left hand and once I have learned the tune I may or may not look thereon after.

I would appreciate some insight into why I seem to learn best by not looking at my left hand and just sensing where my fingers should go.
And I would also like to know if I am going to run into unforeseen problems in the future if I continue to learn to play the banjo this way.

Little Neo