Document Type : Research Paper I Open Access I Released under CC BY-NC 4.0 license
Authors
1 Department of Motor Behavior, Faculty of Sport Sciences, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran.
2 Department of Sport Sciences, Faculty of Education and Psychology, Shiraz University, Shiraz , Iran.
3 Department of Motor Behavior, Faculty of Sport Sciences, Alzahra University, Tehran , Iran.
Abstract
Introduction: The present study aimed to investigate the effects of differential practice and contextual interference on the learning and mental representation of the golf stroke.
Methods: Fifty right-handed female students aged 20–35 with normal vision were purposefully selected from Alzahra University and randomly assigned to five groups: random differential learning, blocked differential learning, random contextual interference, blocked contextual interference, and control. To perform the task, standard golf balls and clubs, circular targets with an 11 cm diameter placed on a grass field (9×4 m), and a mental representation assessment software were used. In the pre-test, participants performed the mental representation assessment task and executed 15 golf putts from a distance of 3 meters. During the acquisition phase, they completed 12 blocks of 15 trials, following their group instructions. Twenty-four hours later, they participated in a retention test under the same conditions as the pre-test and then performed a transfer test consisting of 15 putts from a distance of 5 meters.
Results: The findings showed that during acquisition, the random differential learning group performed significantly worse than the other groups (P=0.001). In the retention test, the random differential and random contextual interference groups demonstrated higher accuracy than the blocked groups (P=0.001). In contrast, in the transfer test, the differential learning groups showed greater accuracy than all other groups. Moreover, mental representation during the retention test improved significantly in the random differential group compared to the pre-test (P=0.001).
Conclusion: Continuous variations in differential learning are likely due to factors such as the emergence of self- and context-dependent attractors and random fluctuations, leading to greater generalizability compared to contextual interference.
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