LAG AND SPACING EFFECT IN MOTOR-SKILLS

The purpose of the present experiment was to determine the effect of spacing repetitions (increasing the time between repetition of a task) and lagging repetitions (increasing the number of intervening trials between repetitions of a task) of a criterion task on retention. The results indicated that the time between repetitions and the number of intervening practice trials on task variations interact to influence retention. The fact that test trials lagged by three trials produced both the best (30 sec intertest-trial interval) and worst (2 sec inter-test-trial interval) retention illustrates the interaction influence. Generally, increasing both the time between repetitions and increasing the number of interpolated trials increments retention. These data were considered to be consistent with the lag effect noted for verbal tasks. That is, lagging repetitions promote increased encoding variability (e.g., Glenberg, 1977) and increased processing and elaboration (e.g., Jacoby, 1978) provided sufficient time is available for this processing.