Efeitos da distribuição da prática sobre a aquisição de habilidade motoras por adultos jovens e idosos

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2008

RESUMO

Human motricity undergoes modifications throughout the lifespan. Aging processes brings in changes which are relevant to practice organization, which makes practice scheduling (massed-distributed) a factor to be considered as it may influence information processing and memory consolidation. The main purpose of this study was to investigate practice scheduling effects on the learning process of a serial coincident timing task by young and older adults. Two questions were proposed to investigate these effects: the first one was about the behavior of performance and variability during the process, and the second concerned on how practice scheduling would influence the acquisition of structures responsible for movement control. Four intervention groups were created with eight subjects in each: elderly-massed, elderlydistributed, young-massed, and young-distributed. The timing task consisted of touching five sensors in a pre-arranged sequence following a tail o light. Movement began after a light stimulus and should finish coinciding with the end of a series of lighting diodes. The study was divided in three stages: acquisition, transfer and retention. In the acquisition a performance criteria of three right answers in a whole was established to conclusion. To answer to the first question absolute error (EA) and variability of EA were compared during acquisition, between acquisition and transfer, acquisition and retention, and throughout transfer and retention phases. To answer to the second question, after-effects of acquisition over transfer and of transfer over retention were analyzed by means of constant error. Results showed no between group differences in the acquisition, but all groups showed error and variability reductions. In the transfer and retention elderly-massed results showed to be inferior in both performance and variability. There was no scheduling effect on after-effects, but an age effect was show on transfer with both elderly groups showing more pronounced after-effects than the young. Results enabled to verify that the elderly are more susceptible to scheduling effects than are the young as massed practice schedule leads to impoverished learning in the elderly and distributed practice enables them to achieve learning performance similar to those of the young. In what concerns the development of control structures, it could be observed that both elderly groups have more need for developing such structures than do the young, but that distributed practice enables the elderly to develop more sophisticated control via feedback which results in more flexible control to this group in relation to the elderly-massed group.

ASSUNTO(S)

a educação física teses. aprendizagem motora teses. prática (psicologia) decs envelhecimento teses.

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

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