The effect of observation on motor learning in a self-controlled feedback protocol

Research during the past few decades has demonstrated that allowing individuals to control some aspect of the instructional setting can facilitate motor learning. This facilitation has most commonly been referred to as the self-control effect. Self-control studies often include a yoked group. This group is meant to counterbalance the aspect of choice given to the self-control group. However, these groups pose a certain problem to the generalization of self-control—the procedure of yoking would never be utilized as a learning construct a real-world setting. Thus, there is a need to investigate the ecological validity of self-control in a more applied setting. Specifically, investigating the effect of implementing self-control in a setting where observation of other learners is inherently available (e.g. groups, teams). Participants were assigned based on when they volunteered for the study to one of five groups in order to learn a cup-stacking task. Four groups were crossing the two levels of the self-control factor, self-control (SC) and yoked (YK) with the two levels of observation factor, observation (O) and no observation (NO): SC-NO, YK-NO, SC-O, and YK-O. For each level of observation, the yoked participants were paired with self-control counterparts (e.g. SC-NO paired with YK-NO). A fifth group was created by pairing a second yoked group to the SC-NO and providing it with observation (e.g. YK2-O). Acquisition consisted of 30 practice trials. Approximately 24 hours later, participants returned to complete retention and transfer testing. Mean movement time (MT) scores during retention and transfer revealed that the YK-NO group was significantly slower than all other groups (p < .05). The results suggested that the application of self-control provisions to facilitate learning may be limited in group settings that afford the opportunity to observe other learners.