To Err or Not to Err: A Question for the Instruction of Psychomotor Skills

It Pays to Go Off-Track: Practicing with Error-Augmenting Haptic Feedback Facilitates Learning of a Curve-Tracing Task

“…Researchers in (non-robotic) motor learning have long recognized the importance of these relationships among type of tasks, feedback parameters/practice conditions and motor learning. Singer (1977) noted that self-paced, closed skills that are performed in a stable environment, are generally targeted to automation. As such, reducing errors during practice, which encourages repetition of the correct performance, with minimal use of feedback, should be most beneficial for learning such tasks.…”

“…As such, reducing errors during practice, which encourages repetition of the correct performance, with minimal use of feedback, should be most beneficial for learning such tasks. In contrast, externally paced, open skills should be practiced for adaptability to a dynamic environment and should benefit more from the varied experience of errors during practice (Singer, 1977). However, our results do not provide support for this assertion, as learning of our self-paced, closed skill did not benefit from error minimization during practice.…”

“…However, Holding (1970) found that despite some repetition of errors, there was little correlation between the errors made in early and later practice. Nonetheless, proponents of errorless learning believe that the experience of errors, especially early in learning, can lead to frustration, practice of undesirable behaviors which must later be unlearned, and lack of positive reinforcement (Singer, 1977), none of which are particularly beneficial for learning. Although this idea first emerged with animal studies in the context of discrimination learning (Terrace, 1963), it has since been implemented using prompts and cues (Singer and Gaines, 1975), physical guidance (Holding and Macrae, 1964, 1966; Armstrong, 1970) and task constraints (Maxwell et al, 2001; Capio et al, 2013) for learning a variety of motor skills.…”

“…The results from this study suggested that both haptic feedback paradigms enhanced performance but there was no significant difference between them. Looking to the broader motor learning literature, it has been suggested that closed, self-paced skills are targeted to automation and should therefore benefit from guided practice, i.e., error minimization (Singer, 1977). However, the importance of online feedback and corrections for continuous skills suggest the primacy of an error-based learning mechanism which should benefit from error augmentation.…”

Instructional Approaches for Individualizing Basic Rifle Marksmanship Training. Task Report - Training Effectiveness Analyses Research

“…A number of theorists have recently suggested that a prescriptive science of instructional strategies can be developed at the present level of theoretical understanding (3,4,5),…”