Mirror-drawing performance as a function of instructional set and conflict

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Motor Skill Learning
• Human Performance

Background:

• Instructional sets can significantly impact task performance.
• Understanding how conflict levels in instructions affect motor skills is crucial for optimizing learning and performance.
• Mirror-drawing is a common task used to assess visuomotor coordination and learning.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of varying levels of instructional conflict on mirror-drawing performance.
• To determine if emphasizing speed versus accuracy under low conflict conditions differentially affects performance.
• To test the hypothesis that performance is inversely related to the level of conflict in instructional sets.

Main Methods:

• Sixty male college students were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions with differing instructional conflict levels.
• Participants completed 10 trials of a mirror-drawing task.
• Performance was measured by total time, time, and number of errors.

Main Results:

• Under low conflict conditions, performance aligned with the emphasized aspect (speed or accuracy).
• Performance did not differ between intermediate and high conflict conditions.
• Performance in intermediate and high conflict conditions was intermediate compared to the low conflict conditions.

Conclusions:

• Instructional sets can effectively guide performance in motor tasks, particularly under low conflict conditions.
• The hypothesis that increased conflict inversely impacts performance was not supported by the findings.
• Task performance is modulated by instructional emphasis, but not necessarily by increasing conflict levels beyond a certain point.