Effect of difficulty manipulation strategies on acquisition, retention and associated perceptions in fine motor coordination task learning in young school boys

This study investigated whether difficulty manipulation strategies affect learning in the fine motor coordination task, perceived competence (PC) and perceived difficulty (PD). Thirty-nine novices’ right-handed boys (age 11.3 ± 0.4 years; stature 147 ± 8.94 cm; body mass 40.57 ± 0.07 kg; mean ± SD), volunteers, were assigned to either control group (CTG: no difficulty manipulation)and two experimental groups: group 1 (EG1: one-dimension difficulty manipulation) and group 2 (EG2: two-dimensions difficulty manipulation). All protocol sessions were conducted at the same time-of-day, in which, there were three periods: familiarization, acquisition and retention phases. Moreover, two stress-conditions of darts throw were investigated (i.e.: free condition (FC) and time pressure condition (TPC)). Results showed significant effect between-groups (p = 0.01, η2= 0.215) based on difficulty strategies manipulation. Analysis showed an improvement in accuracy values in retention tests for only EG1and a significant lower coefficient of variation (p = 0.41, η2 = 0.154) compared to the CTG and EG2. Errors decrease over time for CTG in FC (p = 0.041, η2= 0.203) but not in TPC, while no significant differences in errors for EG1 and EG2 (p = 0.19, η2 = 0.911) in the two stress-conditions. Moreover, PD was significantly different between all test-phases (p = 0.041, η2= 0.234) for EG1 only. The one-dimension learning strategy improves retention in accuracy performances, whereas, both strategies, do not affect errors in both FC and TPC. Therefore, teachers in physical education are not encouraged to combine difficulties in learning process of a novel fine motor coordination task.