EXSC-545: Motor Learning and Performance Article Review
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Liberty University
Raekwon J. Parker
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A) Background
I picked this article to add more efficiency and effectiveness as a Strength &
Conditioning Coach? While reading the title of the article, Novice Motor Performance: Better
Not to Verbalize. I then continued to read to find out public speaking verbal instruction doesn't
really help to putt better. I even went farther to read why they chose a group divided into verbal
and non-verbal groups. That is an important fact. The aim was to put a group of golfers who had
a really low experience in putting. I wanted to find out if I may be able to add small information
when coaching to make the athlete's mind more effective in picking up and understanding
different information within the session. As a coach, you are teaching young adults about the
body and mind, how then to understand why you are using these teachings. Understand how the
mind of athletes can easily absorb this information during coaching because our bodies are
always growing everyday. My role as Strength and Conditioning is more than just lifting
weights, it is to educate young adults the body and mind as training is a life-time habit. This
article relates to concepts and principles of motor learning because it talks about individuals that
someone have given some verbal instructions to understand why people like to assist them to
learn when they get into something that can help them detect or improve on a new learning skill
that is why the theme is all about motor learning
In this case, Chauvel et al. (2013) started with what proved to be an oft-forgotten history
by pointing to Flegal and Anderson (2008) and their history of verbalisation on learning in expert
and intermediate golfers to find whether putting from the intermediate golfers improved. They
hypothesized that, because of the negative effect of verbalisation on the memory of the skilled
individual, memory of the skill is evilly, and unhelpfully changed. They called it an ‘verbal-
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overshadowing effect’. It is meant to be ‘evil’ as this makes the person learning the skill pay
attention to too much of the verbal elements of what they are doing when later performing that
skill. In doing the thing, when performing it to master it, the verbal elements of what is being
done seem to attention-grab from the motor performance, which ideally would be done
automatically. With that, and with some mixed thoughts about cultures who don’t use speech but
generally point to the service area when going off to urinate, they found that the influence on
skilled golfers went in the right direction, but intermediate golfers putted worse. From that, how
would novices do, if all golfers begin as novices, and aren’t they curious as to whether this could
be a way to help put novice golfers on ‘a higher learning trajectory with long-lasting
consequences’.
They told novice golfers to place the ball either up-and-downhill or sidehill. The subjects
were divided into groups that learning-theory thinks of either explicitly (high amount of
declarative knowledge) or implicitly (low amount of declarative knowledge). And, as I asked
you to imagine in the beginning, half of them putted to a distance further out from the pin (high-
error learners), and half putted to a closer distance from the pin (low-error learners). Then, after
the learners had all learned their lesson – their putting stroke, at least that played a role in their
memory – Schmidt and his colleagues split each learner into two groups. He said: Half were
verbalisers (who could verbalize memories of the putting reflecting what they were told about
the putting stroke), whereas the other half … had to perform an irrelevant verbal task. We
labeled these learners ‘non-verbalisers’.
Participants performed putting to a regulation size golfing hole on artificial turf indoors
with standard distance white golf balls with identical right- and left-handed putters. The two
groups (the high error and low error) were given purposely opposing scheduling so as not to
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cancel each other out; the putts were putted from four-meter distance vicinities, across a green,
onto a hole 11 cm in diameter. Putts were putted in ‘blocks’ – wherein a player gets as many
consecutive putts in the hole as possible before a short break. Each block consisted of 40 putts,
which, naturally, were interspersed with both high- (missed putts) and low-error (made putts)
outcomes. Once a block was completed, participants played Sudoku for the same period of time
so that there would be a rigorous lapse of thought about their trials – just in case participants
were put in the verbalizing group next. The non-verbaliser group continued to play with words
and the verbalizing group were asked to write an ad hoc description of what they just
remembered about doing their task. Next came the transfer phase. All putts were performed at
the exact same distance but from a different path.
Some benefits of the study were: they had a good sample size (a ton of participants which
helps with reliability of the study, you can get more opportunities to find holes in the hypothesis)
and all of the golf hole, golf ball, clubs and all else was regulation size. The study was inside so
weather wasn't a factor, participants were able to put it at their own pace so there was no added
stress or concern that would've possibly been there if standing over a shot waiting for someone
else to be far enough on the putting green. Typically when you play golf your mind is all over the
place (mainly concerned with what everyone thinks you are doing that has nothing to do with the
task at hand). The puzzles added help too since sudoku and logic puzzles take an immense
amount of focus.
Among presumably negatives in the study are the environment and an interest in learning,
considering that an interest is only presumed, as the students are novices. As far as the
environment goes, while you want to be indoors and out of the harsh weather, as this would
potentially delay the research, some students are better on an actual competitive scene, in this
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case an actual golf course, then in a research climate. It makes people feel like they are being
tested or observed, which could stunt the learning process. Also, as far as an interest in learning,
for novices, to learn effectively the student must be interested in general. Since they had never
played golf, some students may not be interested in golf, and in that case, it could stunt learning
as well.
B. Summary
The results were divided according to what happened in the three phases: a learning
phase, a verbalization phase and a transfer phase. In the learning phase, this research showed that
the number of complete strokes increased with increasing putting-in hole distance for low-error
participants. On the other hand, it showed that the number of complete strokes decreased with
decreasing putting-in hole distance for high-error participants. Overall, in the learning phase, the
percentage between the high-error group and the low-error group (87.1%, 49.7%) was
significant, proving that the motor type was successfully manipulated.
During the verbalisation stage, the number of words produced during the 3-minute
verbalisation -both for low-error and high-error participants – was similar ‘The average number
of statements referential of a hypothesis-testing strategy while putting reported by verbalisers
was more for high-error than low-error.’ These findings led researchers to the conclusion that the
memory representations ‘underlying the putting behavior differed between the two learning
groups’.
From the last learning distance to the transfer distance, the low-error number of
successful putts declined 2.1. For verbalisers, the low-error number of successful putts declined
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by 2.6, and for non-verbalisers of those low-error putters, the decline in successful putts was 1.7.
In conclusion, the researchers found ‘a small negative effect of verbalization on putting’.
Number of successful putts for high-error participants rose from the last learning distance to the
transfer distance. The number of successful putts did not differ for the verbalisers but did
increase (by 5.5) for the non-verbalisers. Overall, for the high-error participants, researchers
found ‘verbalisation disrupted motor performance’.
Their initial intuitive thoughts that placing words and numbers would help novices
seemed like imperative good and rational thoughts but it didn’t seem to be, since it had the
opposite effect (verbalisation did not help, but also it provided good information that
verbalisation hinders performance), but this also seemed like good information, so does this
mean that pure non-verbalisation is the only effective way to teach novices to learn a new skill?
When the smallest hole circles were placed around the regulation size golf hole, it caused it to
increase in apparent size, and this was sufficient to make the golfers improve their putting
performance When Witt et al (2012) used visual illusions to help the putting performance by
placing small circles around the golf hole on a putting course, they found that ‘when the smallest
hole circles were placed around the regulation size golf hole, it caused it to increase in apparent
size, and this was sufficient to make the golfers improve their putting performance on the next
day’. This is one type of evidence to suggest the advantage of using visual learning over using
words.
What Chauvel et al (2013) really did was to extend Flagel’s study to the novice from the
intermediate and expert levels. The one obvious improvement one might have applied was to test
verbalization beyond just the puzzle. Perhaps the exercise she introduced, presumably she
demonstrated it verbally to the test group too, was another facet of teaching that might endure. If
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they’d built a fine-tuning exercise out of the same visual illusion, and then watched them solve
sudoku, it would have been interesting to see if the participants retained it with the sort of visual
enduring that doesn’t require words. That said, it’s probably safe to assume that they did.
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References
Chauvel, Guillaume; Maquestiaux, Francois; Ruthruff, Eric; Didierjean, Andre; Hartley, Alan.
Novice Motor Performance: Better Not to Verbalize. Psychonomic Bulletin Review . 20:177-
183. (2013).
Chauvel, G., Wulf, G. & Maquestiaux, F. Visual illusions can facilitate sport skill learning.
Psychonomic Bulletin Review 20, 717–721 (2015).
