A review of the contextual interference effect in motor skill acquisition

Abstract

The contextual interference effect is a learning phenomenon where interference during practice is beneficial to skill learning. That is, higher levels of contextual interference lead to poorer practice performance than lower levels while yielding superior retention and transfer performance. This rather counterintuitive effect, first demonstrated by Battig (1966) for verbal materials and later shown to be relevant to motor skill learning by Shea and Morgan (1979), has led to a considerable amount of research. In this article, we review the motor skills literature related to this effect by focusing on two research directions. First, evidence related to the generalizability of the effect is considered to identify possible parameters of the contextual interference effect. It is apparent that this effect is not applicable for learning all types of tasks and for all types of learners. Thus, task and individual characteristics are given particular consideration. Second, the explanations offered to establish what learning processes account for this effect are considered. Here, the different views proposed to explain the contextual interference are discussed along with research addressing this issue. Also, the relationship between the contextual interference effect and the practice variability hypothesis of Schmidt's schema theory is explored. Finally, future research directions are suggested with the goal of providing guidelines for research to enhance our present knowledge of the contextual interference effect and its relationship to motor skill learning.