The Comparison Effects of Individual and Group Competition on Acquisition and Retention of a Sport Skill

It is well documented that competition can affect performance in sports. However, investigators have not studied the effects of types of competition on learning sport skills. The main purpose of the present study was to compare theeffects of individual and group competition on acquisition and retention of volleyball serve. A total of forty male adolescents (age ranged from (16 to 18) were divided into either an individual or group competition groups. The participants were novitiate in volleyball. Based on the task pre-test scores, participants were required to exercise the task either in individual or group competition environments. The AAHPERD volleyball serve test (1984) was used to measure the task performance. The participants of the two experimental groups exercised the task for 10 sessions. Pretest, acquisition tests and retention tests were taken at pre intervention, acquisition, and post intervention times respectively. For analyzing data, independent sample t test and repeated measures analysis of variance were used. The results showed that the performance of the two groups was found to be similar across acquisition phase while a between group significant difference was found at immediate and delay retention phase in terms of the skill performance. The results also showed that the performance of group competition participants was better than the performance of individual competition participants. We suggest that teachers and instructors use the results of the present study to decide on the type of competitive environment for teaching volleyball serve to adolescent male students.