Examining the Effects of Feedback Accuracy and Timing on Skill Acquisition

ABSTRACT

Feedback involves providing information about past performance and indicating how to improve future performance. Although the literature contains numerous examples of feedback as an effective method for improving performance across a range of organizational settings, much remains unknown about the specifics of how feedback acts to change behavior. This study evaluated the combined effects of feedback accuracy (100%, 80%, 20%) and timing (feedback following each trial or after a block of 25 trials) on skill acquisition in undergraduate students when presented with a computerized match-to-sample task that required participants to learn the names of shapes. Results reveal that feedback accuracy had a significantly greater effect on performance than the timing of the feedback.

KEYWORDS:

• Performance feedback
• match-to-sample
• translational research
• skill acquisition

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendment or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.