Organizing and

Scheduling Practice
How the Structure of Practice
Influences Learning
 Objectives

• Key factors that occur when undertaking physical

practice
• Concepts regarding the nature of practice
• Practice schedule organizations and their impact on
performance and learning
• The role of practice variability in motor learning
 Practice

• To maximize quality of practice

– How would you organize your time?
– How would you schedule physical practice and rest?
– In what order will you practice various skills?
– How much variation in skills would you use?
 Motivation for Learning

• Intrinsic motivation
– Learner’s internalized drive (to learn a skill)

• Largely determined by 3 basic needs (Deci and Ryan,

2000)

– Autonomy (control of one’s own destiny)

– Competence (skill mastery)
– Relatedness (being accepted within a social context)
 Motivational Method

• Goal setting: Being encouraged to commit

oneself to a specific, challenging goal is
strongly motivating
Learning to shoot a rifle
Effects of goal-setting instructions on both performance (i.e.,
during practice) and learning (i.e., on a test of retention)
 Motivational Method

• Self-regulated practice: Providing some

control over the learning environment
(“ownership”) is a factor thought to influence
motivation and enhance learning
 Motivational Method

• Social-comparative information: Positive

augmented feedback can provide a boost to
motor learning, even if the feedback is not
entirely true
A balance task
One group received false-positive feedback about their
performance (red), another received false-negative feedback
(blue), and one received only true feedback (green)

Giving dishonest feedback to the learner is sometimes in their

best interest
 Attentional Focus

• For most performers, instructing them to pay

attention to the intended result of an action
produces more skilled performance than an
instruction to pay attention to aspects of the
movement itself
 (without tube)

A balance task (holding a tube in their hands)

Control group - No instructions about where to direct attention

Internal group - To keep their hands held horizontal
External group - To keep the tube horizontal
 Demonstrations and Modeling

• Maximizing the effectiveness of a model

involves considering the following:
– Who should be the model?
– When should observation be scheduled in relation to
physical practice?
– What additional information should be provided
during the observational process?
 Mental Practice

• In mental practice, the learner may

– Think about the skills being learned
– Rehearse each of the steps sequentially
– Imagine doing the actions that would result in
achieving the goal
– Anticipate the sensations that may occur as a result
of performing an action
The fact that mental practice generated learning in the pursuit
rotor task, which does not seem to have a high cognitive
component beyond the first few trials, suggests strongly that the
learning of motor control must be involved with mental practice
 Mental Practice

• Views - How Does Mental Practice Work?

– Cognitive: Facilitates the learning of “what to do”
• E.g., what shot to take, how to grip the bat,
sequence of movements
• Early learning
 Mental Practice

– Motor: Produces minute contractions of the

participating musculature
• EMGs show some evidence but the patterns
does not resemble the actual movements
• Little research support
 Mental Practice

– Anticipation: Produces anticipated sensory

consequences of an action (called feedforward
information)
• Recent view
• Builds a “forward model”
• Allows one to anticipate the results of an action if
it was performed as expected, and to make rapid
corrections if the feedback information does not
match the feedforward (expected) signals
 Mental Practice

• When and How to Use Mental Practice

– In as many different settings as possible
– Large groups can practice at the same time
– Rest phase between trials of a fatiguing task
– Rehabilitation
 Work and Rest Periods During
a Practice Session
• How Often to Practice
As much practice as possible?

– There is likely some upper limit to the amount of

practice per day that is effective for learning
• Fatigue
• Loss of motivation
• Learners need time to reflect on performance to
maximize learning
 Most popular among the learners

Training on keyboard tasks

80 h of practice time (60 h only for one group)

Effectiveness vs. Efficiency

 Work and Rest Periods During
a Practice Session
• Massed practice
– A practice schedule in which the amount of rest
between practice trials is relatively short; in massed
practice, the amount of rest between trials is often
less than the time for a trial
• Distributed practice
– A practice schedule in which the duration of rest
between practice trials is relatively long; the time in
practice is often less than the time at rest
 Work and Rest Periods During
a Practice Session
• Discrete tasks
– E.g., throwing, kicking
– There is no evidence that reducing the rest time
through massed practice degrades learning
• Continuous tasks
– E.g., swimming, typing
– Distribution of practice has both a positive practice
and a positive learning effect
– Dissipation of fatigue
30 s trials on a pursuit-rotor task
 Implications of
Practice Distribution Effects
• Effectiveness vs. Efficiency
– Longer rest periods
• Positive effects on performance and learning
– “Cost” – lost time

– Alternatives
• Mental practice and observation
 Variable and Constant Practice

• The goal of practice is to perform to the

highest possible level of skill when it counts
– E.g., CPR in an emergency - the task should be
familiar to the learner

– Must prepare the learners to be highly adaptable

Review: Generalized Motor Programs
and Parameters
• Invariance - Common temporal, or rhythmical,
organization exists
• The same action can often be carried out with different
effectors (e.g., limbs)
• The same action can differ in surface features (e.g.,
speed), which is specified by different movement
parameters

• How are the proper parameters selected?

 Schema Theory

• Developing the parameters of a motor program

• The learner acquires a set of rules (called the

schemas)
– Schemas relate the surface features (outcomes) of an
action (e.g., distances, speeds of throwing) to the
parameter values necessary to produce those actions
Passing a football accurately requires the player to throw
with different speeds and trajectories under variable
conditions.
How can a learner practice to maximize the ability to
perform this skill?
The schema relates GMP parameter values to outcome
distances. To produce a throw of 25 m (X1) or 45 m (X2), the
learner relies on the schema (blue line) to generate parameter
values equal to Y1 and Y2 respectively.
 Schema Theory

– Whenever a movement is made, the learner records

the result as well as the parameter that was used for
the GMP; Eventually these relationships are
generalized into a schema
– Implications
• The strength of the schema (the blue line) will be
enhanced with practice
• Schema learning is predicted to be better when the
breadth of parameters and outcomes experienced
is wide (variable practice) than when narrow (or
nonvariable)
 Variable Versus Constant Practice

• Variable practice
– A schedule of practice in which many variations of a
class of actions are practiced
• Constant practice
– A sequence in which only a single variation of a
given class of tasks is experienced
• Learners acquire schemas when they practice;
variable practice enhances their
development, allowing more effective novel
task performance in the future
Timing errors in coincident-timing task (predicting the arrival of
a moving light)
Groups a) constant-practice condition (5, 7, 9, or 11 mph)
Group b) practiced all speeds (5, 7, 9, and 11 mph)
 Blocked Versus Random Practice

• Blocked practice
– A schedule in which many trials on a single task are
practiced consecutively; there is low contextual
interference

• Random practice
– A schedule in which practice trials on several
different tasks are mixed, or interleaved, across the
practice period; there is high contextual interference
Responding to a stimulus light with a correct series of
rapid movements of the hand and arm (3 different
tasks)

The abbreviations in Retention indicate the condition in

acquisition and the condition in retention
The learners’ perception of the progress of their own
learning
Why Random Practice Is So Effective

• Elaboration Hypothesis (Shea and Zimny,

1983)
– Frequent switching among tasks (e.g., in random
practice) renders the tasks more distinct from each
other and more meaningful, resulting in stronger
memory representations
Why Random Practice Is So Effective

• Forgetting Hypothesis (Lee and Magill, 1983)

– Frequent task switching in random practice causes
forgetting of the planning done on the previous trial,
therefore leading to more next-trial planning and
resulting in stronger memory representations
 Research Support

• Wright(1991) – Elaboration Hypothesis

– A blocked-practice group was encouraged to make
explicit comparisons of the task just practiced with one
of the other tasks to be learned (inducing the group to
practice the tasks with meaningful and distinctive
processing)
– Outperformed the other groups without the
comparisons process
• Because of the insertion of the specific mental
processing activities
 Research Support

• Lee (1997) – Forgetting Hypothesis

– Attempted to reduce the need for the planning
operations by presenting a powerful model just before
each trial (strong memory guidance)
– The model was combined with random practice (random
+ model)
• Eliminating the requirement to reconstruct the
solution for the next trial
Providing the powerful model before each practice trial, while it
was beneficial for performance when it was present, was
disastrous for learning
 Other Research
Random and Blocked Practice
• Similar effects
– Goode and Magill (1986)
• Different types of badminton serves

– Hall, Domingues, and Cavazos (1994)

• Baseball batting practice, hitting different types of pitches

– Ste-Maries and colleagues (2004)

• Handwriting skills

– Carter and Grahn (2016)

• Clarinetists – learning new musical pieces
This walking garden allows rehabilitation patients to
practice walking with crutches over many surfaces,
allowing for variable and random practice
 Random Practice Limitations

• The beneficial effects of random practice are

not universal
• Random practice is likely to be least effective when the
task demands are especially high
• Benefits might only occur in tasks for which considerable
pretrial preparation is needed
– Not during pursuit-rotor task
• Not much advance preparation between trials
required
Alternatives to Blocked and Random
Practice
• Hybrid schedules
– Some researchers have found that moderate levels
of random practice are beneficial for performance
and learning

– The difficulty of the task and the decision to repeat

the same task or switch to another task depends on
the performance success of the individual
An Exception to Variable Practice?

• Types of shots in basketball

– Jump shots
• Involve the player leaping into the air before
releasing the ball
• Taken anywhere on the court
– Set shots
• The player remains in contact with the ground
during the shot
• Typically taken only at the foul (or free-throw) line
300 trials of the
set shot at 300 trials across
the15 ft free five distances
throw line only

• Performance of set and jump shots from five different locations.

• The blue data points represent the expected performances for
the set and jump shots at the foul line (15 ft) based on linear
regression analyses from the four other locations.
• The green data points represent the actual performance scores.
An Exception to Variable Practice?

• Jump shot accuracy decreased almost linearly as the

player moved farther from the basket
• Even though the set-shot performance decreased in
accuracy as distance increased, performance at the 15
ft mark was much more accurate than would be
expected based on the performances at the other shot
locations
 An Exception to Variable Practice?

• Practice should be structured according to the criterion

demands of the task—how the skills will be performed
in the test situation
– If flexibility in producing a variation of a class of skills
is required, then it makes sense to continue with
variable practice
– If only one version of the task will ever be
performed, then concentrating practice from the one
location appears to have practical merit