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Abstract

The present study aimed to examine the effect of contextual interference on acquisition, retention and transfer of coincidence anticipation task with constant, increasing and decreasing speeds. 36 male physical education participants from Shahid Beheshti University were voluntarily selected and randomly divided into three groups (12 subjects each group) and performed coincidence timing tasks with Bassin anticipation timing. In this research, three separate experiments were used. Experiments consisted of constant speed, increasing speed and decreasing speed. Subjects participated in pretest, acquisition, blocked retention, random retention and transfer tests. Absolute temporal errors were analyzed by one-way ANOVA, ANOVA with repeated measures and Bonferroni post hoc tests (P<0.05). Research results showed contextual interference effect in the first experiment with constant speeds in all three phases. In the second experiment with increased speeds, contextual interference effect was observed in acquisition and random retention. In the third experiment with decreased speeds, contextual interference effect was conversely observed in acquisition and blocked retention in favor of blocked group. Generally, results showed contextual interference effect in constant speeds in random retention and transfer phases while this effect was not observed in increasing speeds. This effect was observed in decreasing speeds in only blocked retention phase. Regarding interpreted cognitive difficulties in decreasing speeds due to self-tasks and also difficulty of problem solving in random groups, the results were interpreted by increasing cognitive load, difficulty of perceptive task for decreasing speeds and the effect of reducing the effect of timing errors in tasks with increasing speeds (exceptions of the speed-accuracy exchange).

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