Purpose: The purpose of this work is focused on the study of the effect that feedback has on competence valuation, perceived competence, autonomous motivation, vitality, and performance in a throwing task. Method: Thirty-five college students (26 men and 9 women), without previous experience in the task, participated in this study. The students…

Purpose: Research has demonstrated that verbal instructions directing attention externally (i.e., toward the effect of the movement) significantly enhance motor skill performance, and this effect is enhanced when the distance of the external focus relative to the body is increased. However, few studies have investigated this distance-of-focus…

Purpose: In sports games, coaches often use tactic boards to present tactical instructions during time-outs (e.g., 20 s to 60 s in basketball). Instructions should be presented in a way that enables fast and errorless information processing for the players. The aim of this study was to test the effect of different orientations of visual tactical…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to know whether an intervention using an adaptation of the teaching games for understanding approach (named teaching races for understanding [TRfU]) led participants to improve skill execution, decision making, race performance, race involvement, race knowledge, enjoyment, intention to continue practicing…

In my commentary in response to the 3 articles (McKenzie & Lounsbery, 2013; Rink, 2013; Ward, 2013), I focus on 3 areas: (a) content knowledge, (b) a holistic approach to physical education, and (c) policy impact. I use the term "quality teaching" rather than "teacher effectiveness." Quality teaching is a term with the…

By bringing together the national German sports game community and an international scientific community in a joint conference, the 6th International Teaching Games for Understanding Conference (TGfU) Meets the 10th German Sports Games Symposium of the German Association of Sport Science (DVS), held July 25-27, 2016, at the German Sport University…

In motor learning, a popular area of research has been to examine the importance of where individuals focus their attention during the acquisition of motor skills. Researchers in this area have proposed that, when teaching a motor skill, the instructions used to direct the learner's attention can affect the immediate and long-term retention of…

The purposes of this study were to associate age-related performance deficits in children with the use of recall strategies and to determine whether children who performed poorly in cycling would benefit from learning a recall strategy. In Experiment 1, 18 younger children (ages 5-7 years) and 18 older children (ages 8-10 years) were asked to…

A review and commentary on the previous article discusses the effects of stabilized retinal images on performance and the perceptual organization of a patterned skill. Future research on distribution-of-practice is considered. (JD)

There is strong evidence that massed practice depresses performance and learning when learning is assessed by absolute retention measures. This finding is discussed relative to other literature on distribution of practice as well as recent issues in motor learning. (JD)