I vaguely recall an arcticle in "Flying" in the late 60's early 70's.
It seems they gave, as an experiment, some ab initio students their first 5 hours totaly on instruments.
I assume this gave them a good scan but wonder what effect this had on their later VFR training.
I can't remember what the conclusions drawn from the experiment were.
When I started training... looking at the instruments was initialy discouraged. Looking around was encouraged. LOL