VERBAL KNOWLEDGE OF RESULTS AS REDUNDANT INFORMATION FOR LEARNING AN ANTICIPATION TIMING SKILL

Two opposing views of the role of verbal knowledge of results (KR) during learning argue that KR adds essential information to sensory feedback that aids skill learning or that KR is redundant with visual feedback and is therefore not essential for learning this skill. These views were compared in four experiments that involved learning a coincidence-anticipation timing skill requiring a striking action for one stimulus speed (experiments 1 and 2) or three randomly presented stimulus speeds (experiments 3 and 4). Two learning test situations involved either a no-KR retention test (experiments 1 and 3) or a novel stimulus speeds transfer test (experiments 2 and 4). In each experiment, five KR withdrawal conditions were distinguished on the basis of the number of the 75 practice trials on which verbal KR, as timing accuracy information, was available. Results of all four experiments were consistent in showing no differences among the KR withdrawal conditions during retention or transfer tests. Thus, visual feedback provided sufficient information to the learner to enable performance improvement during practice, maintain the acquired level of performance over a 24-hour period, and generalize performance to novel stimulus speed conditions.