Efeitos da prática autocontrolada e estruturação de prática na aquisição de habilidades motoras em virtude da complexidade da tarefa

Abstract

In motor skills acquisition, practice conditions are traditionally controlled by teacher or researcher. As opposed to these conditions, in the self-control in learning the learner has some control on practice schedule, becoming a more active participant. In self-controlled condition, it is possible that learners use more coherent strategies to their own necessities, instead of strategies used by a teacher. One of the aspects that could influence self-controlled factors is task complexity. Some studies have shown that in complex tasks, learners choose to have small variability of sequences in acquisition phase resulting in a negative influence only in this phase (KEETCH; LEE, 2005; WU, MAGILL; FOTO, 2005). On the other hand, in simple tasks, learners tended to present higher variability of sequences and earlier during practice, which was helpful for learning (KEETCH; LEE, 2007). Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effects of practice schedule and self-controlled practice in motor skill acquisition as a function task complexity. The results showed that in lower complex tasks, different practice schedules, regardless of whether self-controlled or not, they showed similar performance in tests. However, in higher complex tasks, the learners control over practice is beneficial for learning process. The results also indicated a greater number of exchanges of sequences in self-controlled practice with higher complex tasks when compared to self-controlled practice with lower complex tasks. In summary, we can conclude that self-controlled group with lower complex tasks showed improvement in performance and the task was not a challenge and its group tried less possibilities of variation, resulting in few beneficial effects on learning. The opposite may have occurred in self-controlled practice with higher complex tasks because the more complex tasks may have generated more challenges and a greater possibility of variation in sequences, which may have led this group to obtain greater benefits during the learning task. Future researches could explore not necessarily self-control but the benefits that it promotes, as motivation, self-confidence, cognitive effort, attention, active participation on learning process, and establishment of more suitable strategies.