THE ROLE OF INTERFERENCE AND TASK SIMILARITY ON THE ACQUISITION, RETENTION, AND TRANSFER OF SIMPLE MOTOR-SKILLS

The aim of the present study was to determine if two levels of task similarity influenced acquisition, retention, and transfer performance of three simple motor skills. Sixty right-handed subjects were randomly assigned to one of five (n =12) experimental conditions. Each subject performed 72 trials during acquisition. Twenty-four trials were recorded for each movement task. Following a 5-min unfilled retention interval, subjects performed 4 trials on each task before completing 12 transfer trials of a novel movement. Contextual interference effects for acquisition and retention were supported for low but not high similarity tasks. Further, the results suggest that a different memory representation exists for high and low similarity tasks. © 1991 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.