學院

醫學院

系所

職能治療學系

題名

Effects of mental practiceon skill acquisition in healthy adults

作者

林克忠 ( LIN KEH-CHUNG )

期刊名稱

FORMOSAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL THERAPY v.26 pp.263-270

發表日期

2001

著作性質

原始論著

語文

英文

摘要

Background and Purpose: Movement rehabilitation usually involves learning or relearning of motor skills in order to improve task performance. Practice is an essential component of this motor learning process. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of mental practice, one of the means of motor learning, on skill acquisition of a mirror-drawing task in healthy adults. Methods: Fifty-two healthy adults were randomly assigned to one of four groups: fourteen persons in the physical practice group (PP), eleven in the mental practice group with fixed duration of practice (MP 1), fourteen in another mental practice group with fixed number of practice trials (MP2), and thirteen in the group with no practice (NP). A mirror-drawing activity was used as the experimental task. Subjects were asked to view the reflected star-shaped figure in the mirror and mentally or physically practice moving the steel pen on the figure board The dependent variables included the difference between pre- and post-tests in two measures of task performance: the time spent for task completion and the number of drawing errors Analysis of covariances (ANCOVAs) were performed for each dependent variable. Results: A significant group difference in task performance was found for both Performances time (E (3, 47) = 9.064，且< .001) and the number of erreros (E (3 , 47) = 6.329, 且= .001). The physical practice group improved to a greater extent than the other three groups. Mental practice led to improved performance but in different ways depending on the mode of mental practice. For time spent in completing the task, performances improvement in the PP group was greater than that in the MP 1 group. The MP 1 group improved more than the MP 2 group and the NP group. For the numbers of errors， the greatest improvement was found in the PP group, e叮or decrements in the MP 1 group and the NP group showed the least amount of improvement. Conclusions: The findings of this study support 也e tenet that either physical or mental practice can facilitate acquisition 。f motor skills. Further research employing clinical or aged populations is needed to extend the findings of this study. Additionally, the type of task needs to be taken into consideration for future studies. Key words: Mental practice， Motor learning, Skill acquisition, Control of human movement.