Models of performance in learning multisegment movement tasks: Consequences for acquisition, retention, and judgments of learning

Participants learned different keystroke patterns, each requiring that a key sequence be struck in a prescribed time. Trials of a given pattern were either blocked or interleaved randomly with trials on the other patterns and before each trial modeled timing information was presented that either matched or mismatched the movement to be executed next. In acquisition, blocked practice and matching models supported better performance than did random practice and mismatching models. In retention, however, random practice and mismatching models were associated with superior learning. Judgments of learning made during practice were more in line with acquisition than with retention performance, providing further evidence that a learner’s current ease of access to a motor skill is a poor indicator of learning benefit. In the last several decades, a number of manipulations of prac-tice and study conditions has been shown to have effects on acquisition performance that differ from the effects of those ma-nipulations on learning—as assessed by delayed tests of retentio