Autonomy Support via Instructionally Irrelevant Choice Not Beneficial for Motor Performance or Learning

ABSTRACT

Purpose: The Optimizing Performance Through Motivation and Attention for Learning (OPTIMAL) theory predicts that providing learners with choices during skill acquisition will enhance their acquisition performance, motor learning, and expectancies. Based on this theory, it is recommended that instructors ask learners to choose which tasks to practice in applied settings. This experiment tested these predictions and recommendation by crossing autonomy support with practice schedule in a 2 × 2 factorial design. Method: Participants (N = 128) practiced a novel non-dominant hand dart-throwing task either with choice over the color of the dart flights (autonomy) or yoked to a counterpart’s choices (yoked). Further, participants either practiced throwing darts to three different targets in equal amounts (variable) or throwing to the same target for all practice trials (constant). All participants completed a pretest, acquisition phase, 24-hr delayed retention and transfer tests, as well as baseline and post-acquisition autonomy, and self-efficacy measures. Data were analyzed according to a pre-registered analysis plan that included pretest and gender as covariates. Results: The autonomy groups reported significantly greater perceived autonomy at the end of acquisition. There were no significant effects of autonomy on self-efficacy, or motor performance uniquely during acquisition, or uniquely on the delayed transfer test. The autonomy groups, however, performed with significantly greater error across acquisition and transfer. Practice schedule interacted with the time of testing such that the constant groups performed significantly more accurately during acquisition but non-significantly less accurately during transfer than the variable groups. Conclusions: These results are inconsistent with OPTIMAL theory.

KEYWORDS:

• Autonomy
• OPTIMAL theory
• schema theory
• variable practice

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Heather Smith for her assistance with data collection and participant recruitment.

Notes

¹ Analysis restricted to N = 6 pilot participants that completed the exact posttesting procedures that were later used in the present experiment.

² posttest order was not counterbalanced in order to avoid exposing the constant practice participants to a novel target prior to completing their retention test. As a consequence, differences in difficulty between the retention and transfer targets are confounded with test order, so we refrain from drawing conclusions about which test was more difficult.

³ To determine if the results were sensitive to the decision to delete outliers, performance data were log transformed and reanalyzed with the full sample. All statistical significance decisions were unchanged in the sensitivity analysis.

⁴ Conducting the same analysis with retention data did not change any of the statistical significance decisions.

⁵ On p. 1405, Wulf and Lewthwaite (2016) use the language “in general,” consistent with the strong-version of the hypothesis.

Additional information

Funding

This research was approved by the University of Ottawa Research Ethics Board. Funding was received for this research from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [CGS Doctoral Research Grant].