Comparison of Effects of Implicit versus Explicit Learning of a Novel Skill in Young Gymnastic Athletes

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of explicit learning with implicit learning using a dual-task paradigm on learning a novel skill and whether the performance was maintained over an extended period.

Forty-four young children from a local gymnastics club (n = 44, boys n = 10, girls n = 34, age: 10 ± 2.9 years) completed four 30 min front-flip practice sessions over four weeks between pre- and post-test, followed by two retention tests three and six months after the post-test, in which no front-flip practice occurred.

Comparable improvements were found beyond baseline performance for both learning conditions over the six-month hiatus. While both groups increased performance at the post-test, neither explicit nor implicit learning groups were able to maintain the achieved performance level into six months of retention. In particular, the explicit group showed a more marked decrease than the implicit group after three months, which was probably caused by the decay of their reliance on the retrieval of declarative knowledge from working memory.

The current findings highlight the importance of conducting retention tests over an extended period to monitor performance development after the acquisition of a novel task by different learning methods, as they can differ over time.