Apparently Wingo published a memoir in 1982 under the title Around the world Backwards, and the new biography is called The Man Who Walked Backward: An American Dreamer's Search for Meaning in the Great Depression.
When my son had just gotten to the point he could confidently walk, we watched as he went from the living room, around a corner, down the hall and around a corner into his room - backwards the whole way. He didn't turn his head or walk slow. We'd never seen him walk backwards before.
He started as an adult, so I doubt that there were permanent effects. It does remind me of those experiments with kittens, where researchers mounted prisms over their eyes, and then studied their optic pathways, using intracranial electrodes and so on. In those cases, brain development basically reversed whatever distortion the prisms caused.
But damn, teaching a kid to ride that backwards bike is sick.
Wikipedia sort of answers that question but leaves open a ton of other questions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plennie_L._Wingo
Apparently Wingo published a memoir in 1982 under the title Around the world Backwards, and the new biography is called The Man Who Walked Backward: An American Dreamer's Search for Meaning in the Great Depression.