Peters, Kevin

Positive coaching techniques are gaining prominence in the sport of Gymnastics. Coaches are focusing on positive reinforcement, encouragement, and constructive feedback rather than relying solely on traditional, more authoritarian coaching methods. Furthermore, technology is being used to enhance coach-athlete relationships. Video analysis tools and performance tracking software allow for more detailed feedback and communication between coaches and gymnasts. Previous research has shown that sensory feedback, and physical cues and guidance impact both motor learning and motor skill performance. Spotting is a form of physical guidance (touch) that may be used by gymnastics coaches during both the learning phase of a skill and during performance, even after mastery. This research has examined whether and how spotting with touch influences the athlete's skill performance and confidence. The current study explored how spotting affects both skill performance and self-confidence of participants as they performed a basic skill (a backward jump onto a specified target) they have already mastered. We asked Intermediate-level gymnasts to perform a backward jump from height under two levels of landing difficulty, while being spotted with and without touch. Their confidence was measured in each condition using a brief survey. The timing, accuracy and precision of their landing was measured from video recordings of their performance. We evaluated the relationship between touch and skill performance to determine if it is affected by athlete self-confidence. It was hypothesized that physical guidance in the form of spot with touch would improve the accuracy and precision of the jump landing and that athletes would report higher levels of self-confidence in the touch versus no touch condition. We found no significant differences in skill performance and landing stability as assessed by rate of force development and peak force. We found that participants reported significantly higher levels of self-confidence when receiving spot with touch in the easy landing condition.

Author Keywords: gymnastics, physical guidance, self-confidence, skill performance, spotting, touch

Typically task interference is studied using reaching adaptation tasks (visuomotor rotation and/or force-field learning). Participants in these experiments are already experts at the base task (point-to-point, planar reaching) and their ability to adapt reaching to the imposed perturbation is studied. The pattern of data induced by the perturbation is used to make inferences about the nature and neural correlates of our learning and memory for reaching perturbations, specifically, and motor performance in general. We wanted to see if it is possible to demonstrate this same interference pattern using a novel vegetable-chopping task, where we can easily recreate natural performance settings using a task for which we can easily identify non-experts. Participants performed a chopping task in which they are asked to chop a sweet potato into 5 mm-wide slices, matching the beat of a metronome (120 bpm). Following this initial learning, participants were exposed to an interference condition. Participants then performed trials of the original task again. Interference was inferred if the second performance of the original task was impaired, compared to initial performance. Experiment 1 involved novice choppers, and either the force or frequency of chops was manipulated. Only the altered frequency task produced interference effects. In Experiment 2, competent and expert choppers had to manage either a faster or slower frequency. We found evidence for interference in competents, but not experts. These results support the idea that the vulnerability to interference of motor memory changes with practice, and so any inferences made about memory structure must take into account not only expert performance, but every level of skill.

Author Keywords: expertise, interference, motor learning, reaching adaptation