Improvements in Middle-Schoolers’ Performance and Motivation to Practice: An Experimental Investigation of Accurate Feedback in a Motor Task

The present field experiment investigated the effects of accurate and non-accurate performance feedback on causal attributions, success expectancy, performance, and persistence on a motor task. Forty-six male middle-schoolers were randomly assigned to a Contingent (accurate) feedback, Non-contingent (non-accurate) feedback, or Control (no feedback) group and completed a challenging motor task. An initial treatment phase provided either accurate contingent feedback or yoked non-contingent feedback during the task, and measured task performance, attributions about performance, and success expectancy about future performance. A subsequent testing phase (same task) used the same measures and added a measure of motivation (persistence). Compared to the Contingent and Control groups, Noncontingent outcome feedback during the initial treatment phase led to more personally uncontrollable attributions, lower success expectancy, poorer performance, and lower persistence in the subsequent test phase. Despite a high rate of failure in the motor task for both feedback groups in the treatment phase, the Contingent group—getting accurate feedback about performance—had a higher sense of personal control and expectancy of success than the Non-contingent feedback group initially, and maintained these perceptions in the subsequent test phase where they also had better performance and higher levels of persistence than the Non-contingent group. Non-contingent feedback in an initial motor task appears to induce helplessness deficits in subsequent task performance and persistence. In contrast, providing accurate (contingent) feedback about achieved performance appears to protect against performance and motivational losses.

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Reactivity and personal control over stimulation supply

European Journal of Personality ◽

10.1002/per.2410020102 ◽

1988 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 1-10 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Tatiana Klonowicz ◽

Grazyna Zawadzka

Keyword(s):

Residual Stress ◽

Individual Differences ◽

Task Performance ◽

Stimulus Presentation ◽

Personal Control ◽

High Reactivity ◽

High Rate ◽

Positive Effect ◽

Different Levels ◽

Low Rate

The experiment was designed to study the effect of personal control, operationalized in terms of choice between a more demanding and a less demanding task, on persons with different levels of reactivity. Subjects were randomly assigned and individually tested in a 2 (High reactivity/Low reactivity) × 2 (Low rate of stimulus presentation/ High rate of stimulus presentation) × 2 (Choice/No Choice) factorial experiment with 15 subjects per condition. The two principal dependent measures were the total number of correct responses in a serial RT task and the post‐task levels of anxiety, anger, and curiosity. The major finding was that while the availability of control had a positive effect on both task performance and affect, its role was situation‐specific, i.e. limited to the difficult task. Most probably the availability of control masks the variability of reaction due to individual differences in reactivity. However, high‐reactives are still left with the residual stress of unresolved emotions.

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Effects of Concurrent Manual Task Performance on Connected Speech Acoustics in Individuals With Parkinson Disease

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/2019_jslhr-s-msc18-18-0190 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 62 (7) ◽

pp. 2099-2117 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Jason A. Whitfield ◽

Zoe Kriegel ◽

Adam M. Fullenkamp ◽

Daryush D. Mehta

Keyword(s):

Task Performance ◽

Speech Production ◽

Dual Task ◽

Motor Task ◽

Task Condition ◽

Connected Speech ◽

Speech Acoustics ◽

Single Task ◽

Manual Task ◽

Task Conditions

Purpose Prior investigations suggest that simultaneous performance of more than 1 motor-oriented task may exacerbate speech motor deficits in individuals with Parkinson disease (PD). The purpose of the current investigation was to examine the extent to which performing a low-demand manual task affected the connected speech in individuals with and without PD. Method Individuals with PD and neurologically healthy controls performed speech tasks (reading and extemporaneous speech tasks) and an oscillatory manual task (a counterclockwise circle-drawing task) in isolation (single-task condition) and concurrently (dual-task condition). Results Relative to speech task performance, no changes in speech acoustics were observed for either group when the low-demand motor task was performed with the concurrent reading tasks. Speakers with PD exhibited a significant decrease in pause duration between the single-task (speech only) and dual-task conditions for the extemporaneous speech task, whereas control participants did not exhibit changes in any speech production variable between the single- and dual-task conditions. Conclusions Overall, there were little to no changes in speech production when a low-demand oscillatory motor task was performed with concurrent reading. For the extemporaneous task, however, individuals with PD exhibited significant changes when the speech and manual tasks were performed concurrently, a pattern that was not observed for control speakers. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.8637008

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Human Cerebral Potentials During Motor Training Under Different Forms of Sensory Feedback

Journal of Psychophysiology ◽

10.1027//0269-8803.13.4.234 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 13 (4) ◽

pp. 234-244

Author(s):

Uwe Niederberger ◽

Wolf-Dieter Gerber

Keyword(s):

Healthy Subjects ◽

Sensory Feedback ◽

Motor Task ◽

Tactile Feedback ◽

Proprioceptive Feedback ◽

Motor Training ◽

Feedback Group ◽

Emg Feedback ◽

The Right ◽

Training Success

Abstract In two experiments with four and two groups of healthy subjects, a novel motor task, the voluntary abduction of the right big toe, was trained. This task cannot usually be performed without training and is therefore ideal for the study of elementary motor learning. A systematic variation of proprioceptive, tactile, visual, and EMG feedback was used. In addition to peripheral measurements such as the voluntary range of motion and EMG output during training, a three-channel EEG was recorded over Cz, C3, and C4. The movement-related brain potential during distinct periods of the training was analyzed as a central nervous parameter of the ongoing learning process. In experiment I, we randomized four groups of 12 subjects each (group P: proprioceptive feedback; group PT: proprioceptive and tactile feedback; group PTV: proprioceptive, tactile, and visual feedback; group PTEMG: proprioceptive, tactile, and EMG feedback). Best training results were reported from the PTEMG and PTV groups. The movement-preceding cortical activity, in the form of the amplitude of the readiness potential at the time of EMG onset, was greatest in these two groups. Results of experiment II revealed a similar effect, with a greater training success and a higher electrocortical activation under additional EMG feedback compared to proprioceptive feedback alone. Sensory EMG feedback as evaluated by peripheral and central nervous measurements appears to be useful in motor training and neuromuscular re-education.

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Acquisition and Use of Mental Operators: Effects of Type of Practice

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027//1618-3169.49.2.141 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 49 (2) ◽

pp. 141-152 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Burkhard Müller ◽

Jürgen Gehrke

Keyword(s):

Mental Models ◽

Test Performance ◽

Physical World ◽

Test Phase ◽

Acquisition Phase ◽

Practice Test ◽

Subsequent Test ◽

Use Of Knowledge

Abstract. Planning interactions with the physical world requires knowledge about operations; in short, mental operators. Abstractness of content and directionality of access are two important properties to characterize the representational units of this kind of knowledge. Combining these properties allows four classes of knowledge units to be distinguished that can be found in the literature: (a) rules, (b) mental models or schemata, (c) instances, and (d) episodes or chunks. The influence of practicing alphabet-arithmetic operators in a prognostic, diagnostic, or retrognostic way (A + 2 = ?, A? = C, or ? + 2 = C, respectively) on the use of that knowledge in a subsequent test was used to assess the importance of these dimensions. At the beginning, the retrognostic use of knowledge was worse than the prognostic use, although identical operations were involved (A + 2 = ? vs. ? - 2 = A). This disadvantage was reduced with increased practice. Test performance was best if the task and the letter pairs were the same as in the acquisition phase. Overall, the findings support theories proposing multiple representational units of mental operators. The disadvantage for the retrognosis task was recovered in the test phase, and may be evidence for the importance of the order of events independent of the order of experience.

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Operator orientation and compatibility in visual-motor task performance

Ergonomics ◽

10.1080/00140138908966105 ◽

1989 ◽

Vol 32 (4) ◽

pp. 387-399 ◽

Cited By ~ 63

Author(s):

CHARLES J. WORRINGHAM ◽

DENNIS B. BERINGER

Keyword(s):

Task Performance ◽

Motor Task ◽

Visual Motor

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Impact of task difficulty and motor ability on visual-motor task performance of children with and without developmental coordination disorder

Human Movement Science ◽

10.1016/j.humov.2014.02.006 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 34 ◽

pp. 217-232 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Noémi Cantin ◽

Jennifer Ryan ◽

Helene J. Polatajko

Keyword(s):

Task Performance ◽

Task Difficulty ◽

Developmental Coordination Disorder ◽

Motor Task ◽

Motor Ability ◽

Visual Motor ◽

Coordination Disorder

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Neuronal Substrates Underlying Performance Variability in Well-Trained Skillful Motor Task in Humans

Neural Plasticity ◽

10.1155/2016/1245259 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 2016 ◽

pp. 1-9 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Nobuaki Mizuguchi ◽

Shintaro Uehara ◽

Satoshi Hirose ◽

Shinji Yamamoto ◽

Eiichi Naito

Keyword(s):

Task Performance ◽

Motor Skill ◽

Brain Activity ◽

Motor Task ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Anterior Cingulate ◽

Cerebellar Hemisphere ◽

Intensive Training ◽

Performance Variability ◽

The Right

Motor performance fluctuates trial by trial even in a well-trained motor skill. Here we show neural substrates underlying such behavioral fluctuation in humans. We first scanned brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging while healthy participants repeatedly performed a 10 s skillful sequential finger-tapping task. Before starting the experiment, the participants had completed intensive training. We evaluated task performance per trial (number of correct sequences in 10 s) and depicted brain regions where the activity changes in association with the fluctuation of the task performance across trials. We found that the activity in a broader range of frontoparietocerebellar network, including the bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), anterior cingulate and anterior insular cortices, and left cerebellar hemisphere, was negatively correlated with the task performance. We further showed in another transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) experiment that task performance deteriorated, when we applied anodal tDCS to the right DLPFC. These results indicate that fluctuation of brain activity in the nonmotor frontoparietocerebellar network may underlie trial-by-trial performance variability even in a well-trained motor skill, and its neuromodulation with tDCS may affect the task performance.

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Performance, Movement, Posture, and Perceived Discomfort in Active vs. Static Seating

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting ◽

10.1177/1071181319631505 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 63 (1) ◽

pp. 1154-1158

Author(s):

Jeremy D. Faulk ◽

Cameron C. McKee ◽

Heather Bazille ◽

Michael Brigham ◽

Jasmine Daniel ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Task Performance ◽

Motor Task ◽

Fine Motor ◽

Future Research ◽

Trunk Movement ◽

Significant Difference ◽

Within Subjects ◽

Computer Based ◽

Preliminary Study ◽

Static Conditions

Active seating designs may enable users to move more frequently, thereby decreasing physiological risks associated with a sedentary lifestyle. In this preliminary study, two active seating designs (QOR360, Ariel; QOR360, Newton) were compared to a static chair (Herman Miller, Aeron) to understand how active vs. static seating may affect task performance, movement, posture, and perceived discomfort. This within-subjects experiment involved n = 11 student participants who sat upon each of the three chairs for 20 minutes while performing a series of computer-based tasks. Participants showed increased trunk movement while also reporting higher levels of perceived discomfort in the two active chair conditions. There was no significant difference in either posture or fine motor task performance between the active and static conditions. Future research may benefit from additional physiological measurements along with a wider variety of tasks that require seated users to make postural adjustments.

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