It has been shown that the observation of two model types, or mixed-modeling, is more beneficial than watching a single type alone (Andrieux & Proteau, 2013; Robertson, 2015). Furthermore, observing others has been shown to lead to consolidation, however, the distinct behavioural outcomes are different than those following physical practice (Trempe et al., 2011). To date it is unknown, whether the observation of different model types, when interspersed with physical practice, will affect the amount of consolidation that occurs. The purpose of this research was to attempt to replicate the mixed-model benefit and to determine whether a mixed-model observation intervention would affect consolidation processes differentially compared to a single-model type alone. Forty-five university age students were randomly assigned to a mixed-model (MM), unskilled model (UM), or skilled model (SM) observation group. All participants were required to learn a waveform-matching task, in which they used their non-dominant arm to reproduce a waveform as accurately as possible within a goal movement time of 900ms. The experiment comprised three testing sessions. The first session required participants to complete a pretest, where they performed 10 trials of the skill with no knowledge of results (KR) provided. Following this, they did their first acquisition session where they received KR on all trials and performed nine blocks of 10 trials that consisted of six physical practice interspersed with four observation trials. Ten minutes following this session, participants performed an immediate retention test consisting of 10 no KR trials. The next day began with a delayed 24hr retention test of 10 no KR trials and another acquisition session. One week later, participants performed 10 no KR retention trials 10 transfer trials, in which participants reproduced a slightly different waveform under a goal movement-time of 1150ms. Root mean square error (RMSE), temporal accuracy and spatial accuracy were collected as dependent variables. Acquisition results demonstrated that all video conditions acquired the skill similarly in terms of all dependent variables. Retention results indicated a significant group by time interaction over the 24-hour retention interval (F(2, 42) = 3.809, p = .030), which showed that those in the MM group were significantly better at the 24-hour retention compared to the other groups, however, this mixed-model benefit was no longer seen at the weeklong retention. In conclusion, these results suggest that mixed-model observation is beneficial to motor learning at the 24-hour retention, in terms of temporal accuracy and also that mixed-model observation could potentially lead to enhanced consolidation of a motor skill.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/36830 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Moore, Clara |
| Contributors | Ste-Marie, Diane |
| Publisher | Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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