Ij. Wuyts et Mj. Buekers, THE EFFECTS OF VISUAL AND AUDITORY MODELS ON THE LEARNING OF A RHYTHMICAL SYNCHRONIZATION DANCE SKILL, Research quarterly for exercise and sport, 66(2), 1995, pp. 105-115
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of visual and
auditory concurrent models on the acquisition of a rhythmical synchron
ization task. Subjects attempted to synchronize a series of dance step
s to the beat of two auditory rhythms. Subjects performed five trial b
locks in one of four practice conditions: (a) audio-visual (auditory r
hythms combined with a visual model), (b) audio-auditory (auditory rhy
thms combined with an auditory model), (c) auditory only (auditory rhy
thms with no model), and (d) visual only (no auditory rhythms but expo
sure to a visual model). Rhythmical timing and synchronization accurac
y served as the dependent variables. Results revealed no practice cond
ition learning differences for rhythmical timing. For synchronization
accuracy, the audio-auditory group produced significantly lower error
scores at acquisition, but no differences were found at retention. App
arently, the availability of models created an information dependency
that resulted in a decrease of performance and, consequently, no group
differences in retention.