The Effect of Contextual Interference Type on Learning Motor Skills in Girls before Puberty

The aim of this study was to evaluate blocked, random, gradual incremental and gradual decremental practice schedules on the acquisition and retention of different types of basketball pass (overhead, hand chest , single arm with dominate hand) in 8-10-year-old girls. For this purpose, 60 female students of second, third and fourth grade of elementary school were voluntarily selected and randomly divided into 4 groups: blocked, random, gradual incremental and gradual decremental. After a pretest for each skill, the acquisition phase began including 5 practice sessions and 81 trials each session. The blocked group practiced 27 consecutive trials for each skill per session. The random group randomly practiced three intended skills per session. The gradual incremental group practiced the first 27 trials by blocked schedule, the second 27 trials by serial schedule and the third 27 trials by random schedule each session. The gradual decremental group practiced the first 27 trials by random schedule, the second 27 trials by serial schedule and the third 27 trials by blocked schedule each session. Participants conducted 405 trials at the end of the practice protocol. After the fifth practice session, acquisition test was carried out and retention test was taken 3 days later. The results showed no significant differences in the means between the acquisition and retention tests and these practices with different levels of interference did not have any drastic effects on different phases of learning (P>0.05).