The Role of Minimization and Facilitation of Learner Involvement During Acquisition in the Learning of a Motor Task

Abstract

<p>When learning a new motor skill, how we choose to go about the learning process can influence how quickly and how well we learn the task. In particular, the role of learner involvement during the acquisition period can be manipulated through how practice is scheduled. Two separate sets of literature (progression of task difficulty and self-controlled practice) which discuss learner involvement during acquisition were reviewed. The motivation behind this thesis is to examine the effects of progressive and self-controlled practice on measures of retention, transfer and dual-task performance as well as to attempt to determine the underlying factors responsible for any benefits of each of these schedules. We examined the influence of practice scheduling during acquisition of a fine-motor skill within the context of the minimization and facilitation of learner involvement through a series of four experiments and one review paper.</p> <p>The findings of the four experiments suggest that an easy-to difficult progression through versions of a task, whether prescribed or chosen, does not always induce implicit learning processes and is also not always beneficial to performance under a secondary task load. The only manipulation that was found to have an effect on dual-task performance was, not the minimization of learner involvement but the proximity of the version of the task first practiced in acquisition to the tested version of the task. Participants that began practice using versions of the task most similar to the test version performed a novel task well under dual-task conditions and maintained this performance over time.</p> <p>The overall difficulty of versions of a task practiced in acquisition appears to have an influence on participants’ ability to perform well on immediate transfer tests and to maintain that performance on delayed transfer tests. These results suggest that learner involvement can be beneficial to performance on transfer tests.</p> <p>The possible benefit of cognitive involvement for learning of motor tasks found in the studies that examined the progression of task difficulty is consistent with one of the main explanations of the benefits of self-controlled learning summarized in the review paper. Interesting motivational implications found in study four, where motivational factors may have overridden the cognitive effort involved are also consistent with the findings summarized in the review paper from the perspective of the self-determination theory.</p> <p>The results and information presented in this thesis present implications for anyone responsible for organizing a practice of motor skills. The most beneficial organization of versions of a practiced task is dependent upon the goals of the testing context.</p>