What is it about?
Granting learners autonomy over certain aspects of the practice context—for example, by providing them with the opportunity to choose when to receive feedback or observe a model—has been consistently shown to facilitate the acquisition of motor skills in several populations. The purpose of the present experiment was to investigate the effects of providing choice over feedback on motor learning in older adults. Participants were divided into two groups, choice and no-choice, and practiced 36 trials of a positioning task. Participants from the choice group were given the choice to control, or not, when to receive feedback during practice. No-choice group participants received feedback according to the same schedule as their choice group counterparts, but they could not choose when to receive it. Two days later, participants of both groups performed learning tests. The choice group demonstrated higher learning compared with the no-choice group.
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Why is it important?
The findings reinforce outcomes of previous autonomy support studies and provide the first evidence that choice over feedback can enhance the learning of motor skills in older adults.
Perspectives
The results are in line with the recent OPTIMAL theory of motor learning (Wulf & Lewthwaite, 2016), and corroborate evidence showing the beneficial effects of practice with autonomy support in older adults’ motor learning. The findings also have implications in practical settings, suggesting that professionals involved in teaching-learning contexts allow older adults the opportunity for choice over feedback during practice in order to enhance motor learning.
Suzete Chiviacowsky
Universidade Federal de Pelotas
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Choices Over Feedback Enhance Motor Learning in Older Adults, Journal of Motor Learning and Development, December 2017, Human Kinetics,
DOI: 10.1123/jmld.2016-0031.
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