PRACTICE ORDER EFFECTS ON SEQUENCE LEARNING

Abstract

Should a given motor task be learned in parts or as a whole? The answers to this question lies within the complexity of the motor task. A discrete sequential motor task was used to examine if learning constituent parts in two practice orders would produce similar performance upon two retention tests of the whole task. A third group that only practiced the whole task was used as a control. The results showed that during the first retention, the part group which practiced the whole task in the reverse order performed significantly faster than the other part group on the execution time and total time measures, and also produced very similar performance to the control group. The results suggest that the retroactive interference induced by the particular practice schedule plays a large role in the learning of the parts of the tasks, which manifests upon the transfer to the whole task in the performance of the group which practiced the parts in reverse order. In addition, this experiment showed that a simple task of low complexity had a part group and control (whole) group perform the task very similarly, producing somewhat contradictory evidence to Naylor and Brigg’s original assertions on task complexity in part versus whole learning. Further studies should also focus on whether blocked order part groups produce similar results to the serial part groups utilized in this experiment.