The efficacy of demonstrations in teaching children an unfamiliar movement skill: the effects of object-orientated actions and point-light demonstrations.
In Experiment 1, adult and child participants were instructed to imitate a video model performing a bowling action with or without a ball. Participants imitated the action with greater accuracy without a ball and in general adults were more accurate than children. In Experiment 2, adults and children were shown a video or point-light display of the bowling action. There was no difference in movement form between the adult point-light and video groups. In contrast, children were poorer at reproducing the action when viewing point-light compared with video sequences (P < 0.05). The novel point-light display hindered the children's ability to provide conceptual mediation between the presented information and action requirements. In Experiment 3, a child point-light group was provided with perceptual-cognitive training. The perceptual-cognitive training group demonstrated better movement reproduction than a group who viewed the point-light displays with no training (P < 0.05), although there were no differences between participants who received training and those who viewed a video. Children are able to perceive and use relative motion information from a display after some general training, and the effectiveness of demonstrations needs to be judged relative to the task context.
Hayes
Spencer J
SJ
Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK. s.hayes@ljmu.ac.uk
Hodges
Nicola J
NJ
Scott
Mark A
MA
Horn
Robert R
RR
Williams
A Mark
AM
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002648:Child; D006801:Humans; D007100:Imitative Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D013177:Sports; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D013663:Teaching; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*