Immediate and Delayed Bilateral Transfer of Throwing Accuracy in Male and Female Children

In the present study, an attempt was made to examine the nature and persistence of bilateral transfer of a throwing skill for a large sample of male and female children. One hundred sixty children ages 6, 8, 10, and 12 years were randomly assigned to either an experimental or control group with an equal number of boys and girls in each group. The experiment lasted 2 days and consisted of a pretest, a practice phase, an immediate transfer test, and a delayed transfer test. On the pretest, each participant performed 10 trials of a novel one-hand throwing task. Following the pretest, participants in the experimental group practiced the skill with the hand opposite the one used during the pretest until they had successfully reached a designated criterion for their age. Participants in the control group performed a balancing activity. Following the practice phase, all participants performed immediate (10 min later) and delayed (24 hr later) transfer tests under the same conditions as the pretest. The results revealed no group differences on the pretest but significantly higher throwing accuracy for the experimental group than the control group on both transfer tests. In addition, boys' throwing accuracy was significantly superior to the girls. It was concluded that bilateral transfer of throwing accuracy can be both a temporary and relatively persistent phenomenon for children and the superior throwing accuracy for boys is consistent with similar gender differences in throwing distance and throwing velocity (Thomas & French, 1985).

Key words:

• gender differences
• throwing skill
• skill acquisition

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Liu

The authors thank the Appalachian College Association and Bryan College for their generous support of this study. Appreciation is also extended to Ann Reed, Brian Osborne, and Stephen Coulon for their contributions to the completion of the project. Please address all correspondence concerning this article to John Liu, Department of Physical Education, and Health Education, Springfield College Springfield, MA 01109.