Initial Performance Level Research Articles

Age and Training in the Development of a Perceptual-Motor Skill

Differences in difficulty produced by a variery of control-display arrangements on the same apparatus have been explained, by Lewis and Shephard (4) in terms of the transfer effects from prior experience. The general hypothesis suggests that where control-display relationships are consistent with those usually encountered in everyday experience positive transfer will cur; where the relationships are inconsistent with population stereotypes some degree of negative transfer should occur. Since transfer effects are usually positively related to the amount of previous training, it has been suggested that the differences in difficulty produced by differential transfer should increase with age, age being an approximate index of the amount of prior training. Some support for this has been obtained by Humphies and Shephard (3). The present paper is one of a series dealing with the general problem of the relationship between chronological age, training, maturation, and performance on the Toronto Complex Coordinator (TCC). In the present experiment the full enrollment of a school was given controlled amounts of training on the reversed task of the TCC. This training was given in two sessions each year, each session being separated by a 6-mo. period. On the basis of previous research (3), it was predicted that the initial performance levels should be an increasing function of age. It was thought, however, that as training progressed the differences between age-groups would decrease, with the youngest Ss reaching the theoretical asymptote of performance before the oldest Ss. The experiment was also designed to discover whether the effects of brief rest periods and intervals of 6 mo. were related to age, amount of training, or the age at which training was started.