Learning
Does Praising Performance Relative to Others Help Motor Learning?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Telling people they performed better than average does not improve how well they learn a hidden physical sequence compared to giving no feedback.
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Whether external feedback helps depends on what it replaces. Curiosity-driven exploration was strongly guided by internally computed learning progress, while in motor sequence learning positive social comparative feedback produced no overall speed or self-efficacy advantage over no feedback, and plain reaction-time feedback without social context slowed learning.
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Whether external feedback helps depends on what it replaces. Curiosity-driven exploration was strongly guided by internally computed learning progress, while in motor sequence learning positive social comparative feedback produced no overall speed or self-efficacy advantage over no feedback, and plain reaction-time feedback without social context slowed learning.
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Does Praising Performance Relative to Others Help Motor Learning?
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48 participants in the final analysis
Five individuals were on medications that might impact dopamine transmission and one individual did not return for Session 2; these individuals were not included, leaving 48 participants for final data analysis.
three experimental feedback conditions
Participants were block randomized into one of three experimental feedback conditions, such that each experimental group had equal numbers of males and females.
Key findings
All groups successfully achieved implicit learning, but those given response time feedback without social context actually showed slower learning than those with no feedback. The positive social comparative feedback did not lead to overall faster learning or higher self-efficacy compared to receiving no feedback at all, though it did lead to higher peak movement velocities. Ultimately, telling learners they are doing better than average was not superior to simple practice without feedback.
Methodology
Researchers recruited 48 healthy adults to practice a joystick task over two experimental sessions. Participants were assigned to one of three experimental feedback conditions: no performance feedback, raw response time feedback, or response time plus positive social comparative feedback. The task involved moving a cursor to targets on a screen, with some sequences repeating in 8-target sequences to test implicit motor learning.
Limitations
This study cannot determine if these feedback effects apply to explicit learning tasks where individuals consciously try to memorize sequence patterns. Furthermore, because the sample was limited to 48 young, right-handed individuals, the results may not generalize to older adults or individuals recovering from neurological injuries. The research also did not measure whether participants believed the false positive feedback they were given, which could alter how they reacted to it.
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