DIFFERENCES BETWEEN IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT ACQUISITION OF A COMPLEX MOTOR SKILL UNDER PRESSURE - AN EXAMINATION OF SOME EVIDENCE

Masters (1992) argued that an implicitly acquired motor skill is less likely to fail under pressure than an explicitly acquired skill. He de monstrated this by showing that induced anxiety led to differences in the golf putting performance of groups who had acquired the skill impl icitly and explicitly. We replicated Masters' basic findings but our r esults suggest that the difference in performance under pressure is mo re readily explained in terms of differences between the learning and testing conditions. Our results are consistent with an explicit learni ng account of the putting task and we found no support fur the claim t hat implicit and explicit learning of motor skills are differentially affected by anxiety.