A quick, well-timed pelvic-floor muscle contraction during physical effort is recommended for active women to prevent urine leakage. Purpose: We address two research questions: how well do future female exercise professionals contract the pelvic-floor muscles, and whether the biofeedback session is necessary to train them to contract pelvic-floor…

Purpose: The net height in tennis (0.91 m) is approximately 50% of a professional tennis player's height. Children are also expected to play with this net height, even though it is approximately 70% of the average 10-year-old's height. This study examined the immediate effect of lowering net height on the performance characteristics of skilled…

This paper presents a preliminary model that outlines the mechanisms underlying the transfer of perceptual-motor skill learning in sport and everyday tasks. Perceptual-motor behavior is motivated by performance demands and evolves over time to increase the probability of success through adaptation. Performance demands at the time of an event…

In this study, we examined the effect of circadian modulation on motor imagery (MI) time while also considering the effects of task complexity and duration. The ability to imagine in real time was influenced by circadian modulation in a simple walking condition, with longer MI times in the morning and evening sessions. By contrast, there was no…

Reduced feedback during practice has been shown to be detrimental to movement accuracy in children but not in young adults. We hypothesized that the reduced accuracy is attributable to reduced movement parameter learning, but not pattern learning, in children. A rapid arm movement task that required the acquisition of a motor pattern scaled to…

We examined the effects of visual control training on expert wheelchair basketball shooting, a skill more difficult than in regular basketball, as players shoot from a seated position to the same rim height. The training consisted of shooting with a visual constraint that forced participants to use target information as late as possible.…

This investigation examined the catching coordination of 12 boys (M age = 9.9 years, SD = 0.8) with and without Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD; M age = 10.5 years, SD = 0.8), under different task constraints. Participants attempted a total of 60 catches in central and lateral locations, under blocked and randomized conditions. No effect…

In recent years, some researchers have examined motor learning in older adults. Some of these studies have specifically looked at the effectiveness of different manipulations of extrinsic feedback, or knowledge of results (KR). Given that many motor tasks may already be more challenging for older adults compared to younger adults, making KR more…

The purpose of the present study was to examine whether learning in 10-year-old children--that is, the age group for which the Chiviacowsky et al. (2006) study found benefits of self-controlled knowledge of results (KR)--would differ depending on the frequency of feedback they chose. The authors surmised that a relatively high feedback frequency…

Recent studies (Chiviacowsky & Wulf, 2002, 2005) have shown that learners prefer to receive feedback after they believe they had a "good" rather than "poor" trial. The present study followed up on this finding and examined whether learning would benefit if individuals received feedback after good relative to poor trials. Participants practiced a…

This study uses three experiments with different kinds of training conditions to investigate the "easy-to-hard" principle, context interference conditions, and feedback effects for learning anticipatory skills in badminton. Experiment 1 (N = 60) showed that a training program that gradually increases the difficulty level has no advantage over the…

The persistence and generality of the contextual interference (CI) effect was tested using a rapid sequential aiming task. Participants (N = 48) practiced three movement patterns for three blocks of 18 trials under a blocked (BL) or random (RA) schedule. Movement patterns were displayed and KR provided throughout practice and testing. A 24-hr…

A paradox in studying sensory perception is that people often attend to a stimulus which provides the least optimal information. Usually, this is a visual stimulus. The study sought to lessen this reliance on vision by training subjects to respond to proprioceptive stimuli. Results are discussed. (Author/JL)

The author discusses a line of research examining the acquisition, organization, and use of knowledge associated with conceptual change in which she is engaged at the University of Maryland. It builds on foundational research by scholars in science, mathematics, and reading education as well as in motor learning and physical education pedagogy,…

Further commentary on distributed practice and the acquisition of motor skills points out that there are at least two viable theoretical perspectives that can be brought to bear on issues surrounding the acquisition of perceptual-motor skills. (JD)