The Effect of Practice Schedules on the Acquisition, Retention and Transfer of Generalized Motor Program

Background and Many factors affect the learning of motor skills, one of which is the arrangement pattern of exercises, which can affect the stability and development of a generalized practice schedules and parameterizing the movements. The current research was performed to monitor the effect of different practice schedules on learning and transfer of generalized motor program in a serial task. Methods and Materials: This experimental study involved the population of male right-handed university students at Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Iran. Therefore, 80 participants (age range of 19-23 years old) were randomly allocated into four groups: blocked, random, blocked-random and random-blocked. The test included performance of serial tasks with different generalized motor schedules (spatial dimension variance) and variable timing parameter. The participants took part after pre-test phase and accomplishing 108 trial exercises according to practice group in retention and transfer tests. When different tests were performed, amount of relative timing errors (measure of consistency and proficiency of generalized motor program) were calculated. For data analysis, descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (repeated measures ANOVA and Tukey test) were used in SPSS 16 (p<0.05). A significant difference (F=3.71, P≤0.00) was observed among different patterns of exercise at the acquisition level, and Tukey test showed that the group with blocked exercise (mean error 20.14±7) had a relatively better performance at this level as compared with other groups (random 31.84±9.4; blocked random 30.25±8.29; random blocked 27.33±7.10). However, at the levels of learning and transfer, despite the relative superiority of combined practices over the relative timing errors, the difference between groups was not significant (P>0.05). The results showed that the blocked exercises caused a better performance at the acquisition level. However, different patterns caused a similar effect on the performance of participants at the levels of learning and transfer in a serial task.