Using

 Purpose ▪ What question were the authors trying to answer? ▪ What was the primary relationship being studied?  Methods ▪ Subtitles: Participants; Task/Apparatus; Procedure ▪ How did they get their sample? How many participants (ages, gender; ethnicity, etc...)? What equipment was used? What was the design? What did participants do?  Results ▪ What did they find? Did they support their hypothesis?

 Brief details: 1. Contextual interference 2. Practice Pawlata roll until “learned” in 2 directions 2. One group learns one direction prior to learning the other. One group learns both directions in an intermixed fashion.  Expectations:  “Does the contextual interference (CI) effect transfer to the pawlata roll?”  Non-intermixed (“low CI”) will attain performance of the skill faster than the intermixed (“high CI”).  Intermixed will retain the skill better than the non-intermixed.

 Participants  16 P.E. students from North Wales with normal vision.  Mean age years, range years.  None had kayaked before.

 Task   Apparatus  2 Europa Kayaks, 2, spraydecks, 2 flat-blade paddles, 1 pool with constant (4ft) depth.

 Procedure  Participants randomly assigned to conditions ▪ (8 per gp, equal male/female per group)  Four trained in pool at a time (all same condition) ▪ Two would be instructed, while the other two supported. Then they switched. ▪ All did 10 min warm-up, then 10-min basic skills (how to sit etc.). ▪ 4 stages of practice: hip flick; paddle position; assisted roll; unassisted roll.

 Procedure  Lo CI: ▪ Complete all phases in “preferred” direction, then repeat in non-preferred.  Hi CI: ▪ Complete each phase using alternate trials at each direction (clock-wise, then anti-clockwise).  Dependent variable: time taken during unassisted practice to record a successful roll in each direction.

 Procedure  Retention & transfer (learning) ▪ Return 1-week later. Up to three attempts in each direction. Recorded # rolls taken to complete a successful roll in each direction. ▪ Then same for half role in each direction (capsize on same side as that you roll up on).

 Acquisition  High CI condition took less time to perform roll in both directions.  Retention and transfer

 What were the main independent and dependent variables in the study?  Dependent: ▪ Skill Acquisition: Time to complete rolls ▪ Skill retention/transfer: # rolls until success.  Independent: ▪ Practice condition (high/low contextual interference)

 What was/were the relationship(s) of interest in the study?  Does the CI effect generalize to the Pawlata roll?

 What were the main hypotheses in the study (if any)? Did the researchers support their hypotheses?  That High CI would lead to longer acquisition times ▪ Not supported  That High CI would lead to better retention/transfer performance ▪ supported

 How good is the external validity of the study? (use the guiding questions)  To what places/settings/people/times are they generalizing? ▪ All people? Outside pool? Age? Length of practice? Non-PE students/people? Learning just in pairs? No individual instruction? Other kayak or other complex skills? Number of skills practiced? ▪ These are all potential “moderators” of the effect...discuss to evaluate EV ▪ Sampling by convenience, maybe with coercion (kinesiology students for course credit)  Key question:  Does the role of contextual interference in learning, found for the values of these variables within this study, likely differ for values of these variables not used in the study? ▪ E.g. Location variable: Study value = pool. Does the role of CI differ when the skills are practiced in a stream (i.e. in a more natural environment)? ▪ E.g. Person type variable: Study value = young adult PE student. Does the effect differ when non PE students are tested (not as quick learners)? ▪ This is brief – you should go into more detail, of course. In each case, an argument about the necessary conditions for the effect to work can be made.

 How good is the construct validity of the study? (use the guiding questions)  Constructs: ▪ Skill acquisition ▪ Time to complete a roll in each direction ▪ (Face validity? Content?) ▪ Pretty crude  Could have been improved – form measures.  What if you succeed early – less practice? Seems odd.  However, results were unexpected, but probably not a result of this crudeness…  Unless…if you practice one way for a long time, and then try it the other way, what happens?

 How good is the construct validity of the study? (use the guiding questions)  Constructs: ▪ Retention & transfer. ▪ (Face validity? Content?) ▪ Similarly crude. ▪ But the crudeness would be likely to result in less reliable findings, and the fact that the findings were significant suggests the methods were refined enough. ▪ 1 week delay? Pretty good.

 How good is the construct validity of the study? (use the guiding questions)  Constructs: ▪ Contextual interference ▪ High (random) vs. low (blocked) ▪ Usually several skills (three of four) – here two. ▪ Length of practice/number of learning episodes.

 How good is the internal validity of the study? (use the guiding questions)  Design RX HCI O A O R O T RX LCI O A O R O T  Use of random assignment and two groups suggests only social threats (and 1 or 2 others) may remain.  But random assignment was of only 8 people per group. ▪ Not enough to ensure it worked. Some kind of pretest would have been nice.  Unlikely that mortality played a part – no drop outs reported  All tested in similar conditions. But could have talked between training and testing.  Experimenter bias? Coach was one of the authors.  Internal validity not terrible. But could be capitalizing on chance here. Would like to see retest.