Motor Learning and Retention: Influence of Practice and Remoteness on Individual Differences

Abstract

One hundred high school girls (N = 20 per group) were initially given 10 trials on the Bachman ladder-climb task; each group was given a different length of lay-off (10 min., or 1 day, or 1 week, or 4 weeks, or 13 weeks) before being retested with another 10 trials. Correlations between individual differences across the lay-off decreased as the length of the lay-off period increased (from r = .89 to r = .69 1 .Correlations between adjacent trials remained relatively constant at r = .90 as practice progressed. As remoteness increased, the relation decreased regularly, from r = .92 to r = .68. Individuals became increasingly different from each other as a result of. motor learning; intraindividual variance did not change appreciably.Learning and retention of motor skills continue to be areas of primary concern because the pattern of retention continues to remain obscured. Results of studies have been confounded due to the fact that not only are there many experimental factors such as warm-up decrement, reminiscence, interference, proactive and retroactive inhibition, which can affect the curve of retention, but also because variables in experimental and methodological design can lead to findings that are misinterpreted or misused. Not infrequently different investigators use different instruments and tasks to study the same problem without so specifying and recognizing; this, then, can lead to inconsistency of results. In order to elucidate facts concerning the nature of learning and retention, many more studies are needed to investigate the various facets of this subject.A previous study by the author (15) found evidence that retention in balance coordination learning was complete, with no appearance of reminiscence or warm-up decrement; lay-off periods of up to 13 weeks were interpolated. This present study is a further investigation of the previous one, specifically for the purpose of examining problems that concern the amount Appreciation is expressed to Franklin hl. Henry. 314