Background: Progress in remote educational strategies was fueled by the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. This pilot RCT explored the efficacy of a decentralized model of simulation based on principles of observational and peer-to-peer learning for the acquisition of surgical skills. Methods: Sixty medical students from the University of Montreal…

Dressing is a fundamental independent living skill (ILS). Vision is an integrative sense which affords learning via sighted observation. Visual impairment (VI) denies/restricts access to learning via sight. As a result, children with VI and conditions where VI may be a component (e.g. Down syndrome (DS)) require structured, systematic support to…

Motor skill practice is very important to improve performance of medical procedures and could be enhanced by observational practice. Observational learning could be particularly important in the medical field considering that patients' safety prevails over students' training. The mechanism of observational learning is based on the mirror neuron…

Being asked to give the Charles H. McCloy research lecture is one of the highlights of the author's academic career. Although McCloy's primary area of expertise was measurement and the analysis of motor skills, he also shared an avid interest in youth development through sport and physical activity. In this article, the author features youth sport…

Current social learning theory proposes that motor skill information which is acquired by means of observational strategies is stored cognitively in the form of a conceptual representation. The latter is then said to be used as a basis for response production and as a standard for response corrections which occur as a function of performance…

This article discusses the critical developmental factors in the modeling of motor skills and suggests practical implications for teachers of young children. Major factors for successful modeling involve the students' cognitive-developmental level and the students' motivational orientation. CJ)

Presented are examples of academic, social, daily living, and motor skills that might be targeted for observational instruction for students with handicaps. At each of three phases of development (acquisition level, fluency level, and generalization level), suggestions are offered on choosing what to teach and deciding how to teach. (JDD)

This investigation examined the effect of model similarity on girls' acquisition, retention, transfer, and transfer strategies of a novel motor task. Forty girls (mean age = 10 years) were randomly assigned to conditions in a 2 (model skill level) 3 2 (model sex) factorial design using four treatment groups: (a) male skilled, (b) male learning,…

Aspects of information feedback and practice conditions were studied to gain insight into processes underlying the observational learning of motor skills. A major purpose was to test whether subjects observing a practice variability strategy would perform better than those observing a model practicing under constant conditions. (Authors/PP)

The project described here focused on obtaining basic information on the memory representation of movement stimuli. When a learner makes a simple movement and is later asked to reproduce it, what is abstracted from the first movement that allows accurate reproduction of the second. The underlying assumption of the project was that unless basic…