OPTIMAL practice conditions enhance the benefits of gradually increasing error opportunities on retention of a stepping sequence task.

INTRODUCTION: Physical therapists should implement practice conditions that promote motor skill learning after neurological injury. Errorful and errorless practice conditions are effective for different populations and tasks. Errorful learning provides opportunities for learners to make task-relevant choices. Enhancing learner autonomy through choice opportunities is a key component of the Optimizing Performance through Intrinsic Motivation and Attention for Learning (OPTIMAL) theory of motor learning. The objective of this study was to evaluate the interaction between error opportunity frequency and OPTIMAL (autonomy-supportive) practice conditions during stepping sequence acquisition in a virtual environment.

METHODS: Forty healthy young adults were randomized to autonomy-supportive or autonomy-controlling practice conditions, which differed in instructional language, focus of attention (external vs internal) and positive versus negative nature of verbal and visual feedback. All participants practiced 40 trials of 4, six-step stepping sequences in a random order. Each of the 4 sequences offered different amounts of choice opportunities about the next step via visual cue presentation (4 choices; 1 choice; gradually increasing [1-2-3-4] choices, and gradually decreasing [4-3-2-1] choices). Motivation and engagement were measured by the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI) and the User Engagement Scale (UES). Participants returned 1-3 days later for retention tests, where learning was measured by time to complete each sequence. No choice cues were offered on retention.

RESULTS: Participants in the autonomy-supportive group outperformed the autonomy-controlling group at retention on all sequences (mean difference 2.88s, p < .005, t[6835] = 3.42). Participants in both groups had the most difficulty acquiring the decreasing choice (4-3-2-1) sequence (p < .001, t[6835] = -4.26) and performed most poorly on the errorful (4 choice) sequence (p < .034, t[6835] = 2.65) at retention. Participants in the autonomy-supportive group performed best at retention on the increasing choice (1-2-3-4) sequence (p < .033, t[6835] = -2.7). Participants in both groups who reported greater attention to the task on the UES Average Focused Attention subscale during acquisition had poorer retention performance, particularly for the decreasing choice (4-3-2-1) sequence (p < .005, t(6835) = 3.39). Participants in the autonomy-supportive group reported significantly higher overall motivation (p = .007, t(38) = 0.728, d = 0.248) on the IMI as compared to the autonomy-controlling group.

CONCLUSION: Individual benefits of errorless learning and autonomy-supportive practice conditions, with an interaction effect for practice that begins errorless but adds increasing error opportunities over time, suggest that participants relied on implicit learning strategies for this full body task and that feedback about successes minimized errors and reduced their potential information-processing benefits. Subsequent work will continue to examine how assigning a positive versus a negative quality to error provision influences the benefits of errorful learning in a variety of tasks.