MOTOR SKILL ACQUISITION AS A FUNCTION OF THE POST-KNOWLEDGE OF RESULTS DELAY INTERVAL AND TASK COMPLEXITY.

Schmidt (1975) and Weinberg, Guy, and Tupper (1964) have expressed the expectation that post-KR delays in simple to complex motor tasks must increase as task complexity increases if the rate of acquisition is to be maintained. This study was an attempt to investigate that prediction. Nine treatment conditions were established by the interaction of three levels of post-KR delay with three levels of task complexity. Volunteer subjects (N = 10 for each treatment condition) were male undergraduate and graduate students at West Virginia University during the summer of 1979. Twenty trials were received by each subject; the first ten were to familiarize the subjects with the configurations of the disc maze apparatus. The second ten trials utilized a timing accuracy goal from which absolute error scores were calculated to determine what effect, if any, varying post-KR delays from simple to complex tasks had on skill acquisition. Results revealed that skill acquisition did occur over trials, and subjects exposed to the shortest post-KR delay interval demonstrated significantly retarded skill acquisition. Also, support was found for the study\u27s major prediction that there was a significant interaction between task complexity and the length of the post-KR delay interval