From novice to no know-how: A longitudinal study of implicit motor learning

Abstract

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.

Exploring Personality Dimensions That Influence Practice and Performance of a Simulated Laparoscopic Task in the Objective Structured Clinical Examination

“…Although, conscious involvement in the control of movement has previously been shown to negatively influence performance during practice, 28 there is evidence to suggest that in certain instances it might be beneficial. 29,30 A cognitively efficient way in which to increase conscious control of movements without incurring adverse effects could be to use heuristics 31 or analogy learning paradigms.…”

Emotionally involving telephone conversations lead to driver error and visual tunnelling

“…Masters (1992) provides further insight as to why anxious individuals are more prone to distraction by suggesting that the introduction of anxiety causes a shift in attention away from environmental cues to internal monitoring of feelings. Maxwell, Masters, and Eves (2000) argue that when attention is directed towards monitoring feelings, performance in self-paced tasks decreases. This would explain why the performance of phobic participants deteriorated above and beyond the decrease in performance shown by dual tasking non-phobic participants.…”

Optimizing performance through intrinsic motivation and attention for learning: The OPTIMAL theory of motor learning

“…Since the early 1990s, Masters and his colleagues have argued that movements should ideally be learned implicitly rather than explicitly (Masters, 1992;Maxwell, Masters, & Eves, 2000). Therefore, instructions should be kept to a minimum as they increase the likelihood that learners "reinvest" acquired knowledge and engage in conscious control processes that interfere with the automatic execution of the movement.…”