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The aim of this study was to ascertain whether the performances of implicit and explicit learners would converge over an extended period of learning. Participants practised a complex motor skill--golf putting--for 3000 trials, either with a concurrent secondary, tone-counting task (implicit learning) or without such a task (explicit learning). The cognitive demands of the secondary task were predicted to prevent the accumulation of verbalizable rules about the motor task. The implicit group reported significantly fewer rules than the explicit group on subsequent verbal protocols. The performance of the implicit group remained below that of the explicit group throughout the learning phase. However, no significant differences were found between groups during a delayed retention test. Additionally, for the participants in the explicit group only, a Reinvestment Scale score correlated positively with the number of rules accrued and negatively with overall putting performance during the learning phase. We use the results to argue against the excessive use of verbal instruction during skill acquisition, which might be unnecessary and ultimately might hamper performance under stressful conditions.

Two studies examined whether the number of errors made in learning a motor skill, golf putting, differentially influences the adoption of a selective (explicit) or unselective (implicit) learning mode. Errorful learners were expected to adopt an explicit, hypothesis-testing strategy to correct errors during learning, thereby accruing a pool of verbalizable rules and exhibiting performance breakdown under dual-task conditions, characteristic of a selective mode of learning. Reducing errors during learning was predicted to minimize the involvement of explicit hypothesis testing leading to the adoption of an unselective mode of learning, distinguished by few verbalizable rules and robust performance under secondary task loading. Both studies supported these predictions. The golf putting performance of errorless learners in both studies was unaffected by the imposition of a secondary task load, whereas the performance of errorful learners deteriorated. Reducing errors during learning limited the number of error-correcting hypotheses tested by the learner, thereby reducing the contribution of explicit processing to skill acquisition. It was concluded that the reduction of errors during learning encourages the use of implicit, unselective learning processes, which confer insusceptibility to performance breakdown under distraction.

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The effects of differential instructional sets on motor skill acquisition were investigated using performance outcome and kinematic measures. Participants were provided with a single analogical instruction (analogy learning), a set of eight explicit (technical) instructions (explicit learning), or were not instructed (control). During a learning phase, participants (n=9 for each condition) performed a modified basketball shooting task over 3 days (160 trials per day). On the fourth day, participants performed a test phase consisting of two 40-trial retention tests, separated by a 40-trial secondary task transfer test, and completed a verbal protocol describing in detail the techniques that they had used to perform the task. No performance differences were found during the two retention tests, indicating similar amounts of learning for all groups. During the transfer test, performance deteriorated for both the explicit and control conditions, but not for the analogy condition. Participants in the analogy condition reported significantly fewer technical rules. Although no group differences were reported for kinematic variables, identification of movement components supported the claim that explicit learners exert conscious control over their movements, whereas analogy learners use a more implicit (unconscious or automatic) mode of movement control.