The Effects of Practice Distribution on the Acquisition of Three Discrete Motor Skills

Abstract

Eighty male college students were divided into two experimental groups practicing three criterion tasks: the floor kip, the front hip circle mount on the low horizontal bar, and the glide kip on the low horizontal bar. These tasks were practiced under different conditions of massed or distributed practice and an ANCOVA was used to test for significant mean differences in the rates of learning between the experimental groups on each task. The subjects' performance on the Metheny-Johnson test served as the control variable in the analysis and the .05 level of significance was selected.

All observed differences in mean rates of acquisition between groups were within the limits of chance on all tasks, regardless of the method of practice. This apparent lack of effect of distribution of practice was attributed to factors such as the pacing of the task, the discrete and complex, rather than continuous, nature of the task, and the learning-performance distinction.