The amount of practice really matters: specificity of practice may be valid only after sufficient practice.
Studies investigating the specificity hypothesis have not always demonstrated that reliance on a specific source offeedback increases with practice. The goal of the present study was to address this inconsistency by having participants practice a throwing task with or without vision at incremental levels (10, 50, 100, or 200 acquisition trials). Following acquisition, all participants in the present experiment performed 10 trials in a no-vision transfer condition. Our results demonstrated that, given a sufficient number of acquisition trials, feedback reliance increased as a function of time engaged in practice. Our results also suggest that increased reliance on a specific source of feedback occurs only after the control strategy for a task is optimized.
Krigolson
Olav E
OE
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. krigolson@psych.ubc.ca
Tremblay
Luc
L
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D054874:Athletic Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D005246:Feedback; D006801:Humans; D009048:Motor Skills / Q000502:physiology*; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014785:Vision, Ocular; D055815:Young Adult