The Influence of False Feedback on the Action Specific Effect in Novice Motor Skill Performance

Abstract

Recent golfing performance influences target size perception, regardless of long-term ability (Witt, Linkenauger, Bakdash, & Proffitt, 2008). Better performance was correlated to larger perceived golf hole sizes than poorer performance. The present thesis used falsified feedback for a mini-putting task to help determine the requirements of this effect. Participants in Experiment 1 viewed their true trial-by-trial performance, but after two blocks of trials, was given feedback in the form of comparison to others (i.e. social comparative feedback). Regardless of their true performance, those in the positive feedback group were told they performed better than others, and those in the negative feedback group performed worse. Target size perception was found to correlate with ratings of task difficulty as opposed to radial error. Because this correlation was not found before feedback manipulations were given, it was suggested that trial-by-trial performance was no longer a strong influencer on target size perception. Instead, the perceived difficulty of the task influenced it. The second experiment completely dissociated motor action from performance outcome. Occlusion goggles and a headset that played white noise activated such that participants were not able to view the resulting movement of their golf ball after their putter came into contact with it. The ball was secretly moved to a predetermined location – closer (positive feedback participants), or further (negative feedback participants). Target size estimations increased as the number of errors and difficulty ratings increased. This was contrary to Witt et al.’s (2008) findings. Since various limitations and confounds could be resolved by running these experiments in an open field, it would be valuable to run them again. This thesis sought to contribute to research by taking the first steps to investigating whether the action specific effect is driven by top-down or bottom-up processes.