Effects of Teaching Acquired Motor Skills on Motor Learning

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of the current study was to determine the immediate effects of teaching one’s own motor skills on his/her motor learning process.

Method: Twenty-three healthy, young adults participated, and they were randomly assigned to either the teaching group or the control group. The motor learning task used was a ball rotation task that the participants practiced for 3 minutes. Then the participants were instructed to teach a listener how to perform the ball rotation. Immediately and two minutes after the teaching, the ball rotation performances were measured again. For the control group, the same procedure was applied; however, during the teaching in the teaching group, the participants in the control group read a scientific magazine aloud.

Results: The number of ball rotations significantly improved in the teaching group but not in the control group. Additionally, the improvement in the number of ball rotations in the teaching group was higher than that in the control group.

Conclusion: Teaching a motor skill would lead to immediate beneficial effects for the motor learning process.