If that sounds easy, just rotate your trackpad or mouse 60 degrees and try clicking on the links in this article really quickly. Kind of like playing games on the original Wii. Except that their hand was hidden from view, and everything was 60 degrees off, so moving your fingers up would actually make the cursor move 60 degrees off-center. The task was to move their index finger around in the air so as to manipulate a cursor and hit an on-screen target. One group received a 1 second pause between attempts, while the others were given either 5, 10, 15, 20, or 40 seconds. The only difference between groups was the amount of time each was given between practice attempts. Uhh…but how long are we supposed to wait between practice attempts? Are we talking an itty bitty short pause? Or a more substantial grand pause? Might there even be an optimal pause length between practice attempts for maximal learning? A test of different pause lengthsĪ 2005 study in the journal Experimental Brain Research yields a few clues.ģ5 participants were split up into 6 groups, and given one practice session (and 25 practice attempts) to learn a tricky motor task. The idea that some of the learning might take place in the time between practice attempts never occurred to me. I always assumed that learning happened during the time my muscles were moving. Heck, even in lessons I’d often cut my teachers off while they were still finishing their sentence in a rush to play the passage again and get it right. I totally piñata’d my way through every practice session. Honestly, I’m not sure I ever allowed for even the slightest pause between practice attempts when I was a kid. That pause between attempts is the inter-trial interval. Or, you could try the shift, pause, and then try again (and pause again, try again, etc.). For instance, if you’re practicing a tricky shift, you could just execute the shift over and over with no pauses between attempts. This is the amount of time that elapses between one practice attempt and the next. Several researchers have looked at something known as the “inter-trial interval” or “post-KR delay” (KR stands for Knowledge of Results). So how can we improve our correct-to-incorrect ratio, learn more from each mistake, and get things up to par without creating lots of bad habits? The value of the pause That’s a pretty underwhelming correct-to-incorrect ratio, and means we’ve had far more practice doing it wrong than doing it right ( read this for a quick refresher on the importance of a positive correct-to-incorrect ratio). After all, we’ve just played it incorrectly a bunch of times, and correctly only once. This piñata approach to practicing often does lead to the desired result – eventually. But dang, it doesn’t sound right, so with nary a pause to reflect upon what just happened, we simply dive back in, and try it again, and again, and again, (whack, whack, whack!) until finally we hear something that sounds decent and move on. We hear something we don’t like, stop, rewind, and try it again. And eventually, the host parent, with growing impatience and frustration starts whack, whack, whacking at the thing in a frenzy until finally the candy begins to trickle out.Ī similar thing can also happen in the practice room (wait, no, it’s not what you’re thinking!). Then the older siblings get into the act, but to no avail. Of course, the reality of piñatas is never quite as exciting as one might hope.įirst off, there are tons of complete misses, glancing blows, and weak hits. I mean, what’s not to like? A hanging cornucopia of sweets, opened in spectacular fashion by smashing with a stick while blindfolded? Good times!
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