Self-Controlled Feedback in Motor Learning: The Effects Depend on the Frequency of Request

Abstract

The benefits of allowing learners to control when to receive knowledge of results (KR) compared to a yoked group has been recently challenged and postulated to be mild at best. A potential explanation for such dissident findings is that individuals differentially utilize the autonomy provided by the self-controlled condition, which, in its turn, affects the outcomes. Therefore, the present study investigated the effects of self-controlled KR on motor learning focusing on the frequency of KR requests when performing an anticipatory timing task. Self-controlled groups were created based on participants’ KR frequency of request (High, Medium, and Low referring to fifth, third, and first quintile) and, then, Yoked groups were created self-control condition pairing the KR request of the Self-controlled groups. We also measured self-efficacy and processing time as means to verify potential correlates. The results supported the expected interaction. While no difference between self-controlled and yoked groups were found for low frequencies of KR, a moderate amount of KR request was related to better results for the self-controlled group. Nonetheless, the opposite trend was observed for high frequencies of KR; the yoked group was superior to the self-controlled group. The results of this study allow us to conclude that the choices made, and not just the possibility of choosing, seem to define the benefits of KR self-control in motor learning.

Keywords:

• self-control
• knowledge of results
• motor skills
• information-processing
• self-efficacy

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Brazilian National Council of Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) for providing a research productivity grant to the author GT.

Ethical Approval

The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of São Paulo (prot. n. 01281112.2.0000.5391) and conducted in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments.

Consent to Participate

Written informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the current study.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 It is important to highlight that despite the small effect sizes expected for the self-controlled condition (compared to a yoked group), one cannot define an a priori expected effect size for the interaction of self-control and another factor and, thus, the calculation of necessary sample sizes estimated in previous studies would not apply here.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded from grants by the Brazilian National Council of Scientific and Technological Development [CNPq − 142223/2013-1].