Cooperation enhances motor learning

Relatedness represents the need to experience satisfaction from interpersonal acceptance and closeness with others and is considered a basic psychological human need. Studies testing the effects of supporting the learners' need for relatedness in motor learning (e.g., Gonzalez & Chiviacowsky, 2018) have manipulated relatedness basically by instructions from the experimenter and using practice and learning at an individual level. A different form of supporting the need for relatedness is through cooperative learning. In different domains, contexts involving cooperative effort strategies and goals were observed to result in greater positive interpersonal relationship and higher goal achievement in relation to individual efforts or competitive conditions. In this experiment, the effects of practice structured in cooperative or competitive ways on the learning of hitting a ball with a racket toward a target was tested. Adolescents practiced in pairs and were assigned to three experimental groups. In the cooperation group, the participants practiced in a cooperative condition while in the competitive group, the participants practiced in a competitive condition. Participants in a control group also practiced in the presence of another participant but were not induced at cooperative or competitive conditions. In the next day all groups performed retention and transfer tests. Questionnaires measured the participants' motivational and affective levels. The results show that cooperation increases intrinsic motivation, positive affect, self-efficacy, and task learning relative to individual efforts or competitive practice. Competition decreases perceived relatedness. The findings add to a growing body of evidence showing the importance of social relatedness for motor performance and learning. They also indicate a positive influential role of cooperation in motor learning.