The effect of selected practice arrangement on acquisition and learning of the relative timing of a motor task: Emphasis on implicit and explicit approaches

The aim of this study was to investigate the different arrangement of practice on the learning the relative timing was a fine motor task. For this reason 64 Participants were selected aged 22±4 years as accessible samplas randomly assigned to one of 5 groups (control, errorful, errorless, gradual increases and random). This study was carried out in four phases which including, which included pre-test (PRT), acquisition (ACQ), and 10-min and 24-hr, delayed retention and transfer tests. First phase (pre-test), subjects participated in 10 trials without knowledge of results (KR) on four-segment timing task. In the acquisition phase, a timing task with three different difficulty levels (simple, moderate, and difficult) was practiced in three sessions of 45 trials with feedback on the total movement time (TMT) and time of each segment of the task (intermediate times; ITs) by experimental groups, except for control. Then, 10-min and 24-hours after the acquisition phase, delayed retention and transfer tests were performed. The findings showed that there was no significant difference between the groups in the pre-test. However, in the 10 minute and 24 hour retention / transfer tests, all groups performed better than the control group. Additionally, in all retention and transfer tests, errorless and gradual increases groups in the relative timing (intermediate times) (RMSE), These results show that practice in gradual increases and errorless groups leads to a better learning of the task and its generalization to new conditions that are consistent with the implicit learning and reinvestment theories.