Reading focus
Syllabus: How Does Practice Build Skill?
Revisit this experiment to connect a particular practice-order manipulation with its retention and transfer tests. Compare what changes during training with what changes at assessment. Later reviews in the optional reading list give different perspectives on how broadly the effect generalizes.
A question to consider. If you mixed three skills during a practice session, what assessment would distinguish useful learning from a temporary cost of repeatedly switching tasks?
Why this reading
This experiment makes the timing and conditions of assessment consequential. Practicing several movement patterns in blocks or in a mixed order can produce different conclusions during training and on subsequent tests.
Before you read
Blocked practice repeats one task before moving to another; random practice mixes tasks. Contextual interference here concerns interference among tasks during practice. Reaction time measures preparation before movement; movement time measures execution; total time combines them.
Read for
- Reconstruct the three practiced motor tasks, the two practice schedules, and the later retention and transfer tests.
- Compare the acquisition curves with Table 1 and Figure 2, attending to the order used during the retention test as well as the delay.
- Use Table 2 to ask how similar the transfer tasks are to those practiced, and what that permits the authors to infer.
Consider afterwards
- A training programme produces quicker performance during practice. Which features of this experiment would you borrow before concluding that its trainees learned more?
Editorial context
The study used 72 college students performing constrained motor sequences. Participants were matched using pretest performance; do not assume a randomized allocation procedure that the paper does not report. The transfer tests concern related movement tasks, not unrestricted transfer to everyday expertise. The later Soderstrom and Bjork review supplies a broader setting for evaluating this example.