Chapter 17: The Amount and Distribution of Practice

Interactive Self-Study Guide — KIN 377

Author
Affiliation

Ovande Furtado Jr., PhD.

Professor, Cal State Northridge

Published

April 16, 2026

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TipStudy instructions
  • Work through each section in order — every concept builds on the last.
  • Complete every Knowledge Check before moving on. Your running score appears in the bottom-right corner of the screen.
  • Fully expand and interact with the Decision Trees and Flashcards when you encounter them.
  • Click Reveal My Score at the end to see your final result and targeted study advice.

Start here: complete the pre-check, then work through each section.

📋 Pre-Check
A physical education teacher wants students to learn a new skill and assumes "more practice is always better." Based on the concept of overlearning, is this assumption correct?

1. Overlearning and Motor Skills

Overlearning is the continuation of practice beyond the amount needed to achieve a certain performance criterion. While extra practice can strengthen the generalized motor program or increase the stability of coordination, its benefits vary depending on the skill type.

Procedural Skills

These skills require a person to perform a series of movements in a specific order (e.g., assembling a machine gun or typing from a text). Overlearning is particularly effective for these skills, especially when they are not performed routinely every day.

🧠 Knowledge Check
In the U.S. Army study on assembling and disassembling machine guns (a procedural skill), what was the most cost- and time-effective strategy to prevent performance decrements after training?

Dynamic Balance Skills

Dynamic balance skills (like balancing on a stabilometer) also benefit from overlearning, but they clearly show diminishing returns where more practice eventually stops providing proportional benefits.

🧠 Knowledge Check
In Melnick’s (1971) experiment on dynamic balance skills, what was observed when participants were given extra practice beyond what was needed to reach the criterion?

Physical Education Classes

Overlearning principles apply effectively to instructional settings like physical education, where organizing practice to maximize efficiency is vital.

🧠 Knowledge Check
In the Goldberger and Gerney (1990) study on fifth-grade football skills, why was the learner-rotated format considered superior to the teacher-rotated format?

2. Diminishing Returns and Negative Effects

While overlearning can be beneficial, increasing practice amounts can lead to a point of diminishing returns. Even worse, for some simple tasks, too much practice can lead to poorer retention and transfer test performance.

🧠 Knowledge Check
Why might providing too many extra practice trials (excessive overlearning) lead to poor retention and transfer test performance?
🧠 Knowledge Check
In Travlos' (1999) experiment where participants estimated the horizontal distance of a line, what happened to the groups that received the highest amounts of practice (127 and 152 trials) compared to the group with 102 trials?

3. The Distribution of Practice Sessions

When deciding how to organize available practice time, practitioners must choose between: - Massed practice: Longer sessions and shorter rest periods. - Distributed practice: Shorter sessions and longer rest periods distributed across more days.

🧠 Knowledge Check
In the classic Baddeley and Longman (1978) study training postal workers, which practice schedule resulted in achieving the typing speed goal in the shortest total amount of training hours?
🧠 Knowledge Check
In the Dail and Christina (2004) study on novice golfers practicing putting, how did the distributed practice schedule (60 trials/day for 4 days) compare to the massed schedule (240 trials in one day)?

4. Explanations for Distributed Practice

Research consistently shows that practicing skills in larger numbers of shorter practice sessions is better than fewer, longer sessions. Three main hypotheses explain this:

  1. Fatigue hypothesis: Massed schedules can cause physical and mental fatigue, negatively influencing learning.
  2. Cognitive effort hypothesis: Massing practice makes repetitions boring, decreasing the amount of cognitive effort learners apply.
  3. Memory consolidation hypothesis: Storing relevant skill information in long-term memory requires neurobiochemical processes that need time. Distributed practice provides this necessary time across days.
🧠 Knowledge Check
Which of the following is NOT one of the primary hypotheses proposed to explain why distributed practice sessions lead to better learning than massed sessions?

5. The Intertrial Interval & The Decision Tree

While distributing practice sessions across days is generally superior, what about the rest time between individual practice trials (the intertrial interval)?

The optimal schedule here depends entirely on the type of skill being learned.

What aspect of practice distribution are you planning?
↓
🧠 Knowledge Check
When considering the length of the intertrial interval (rest between practice trials), how does the type of skill influence the optimal practice schedule?

6. Flashcards: Key Terms

Click each card to flip it.

Overlearning
Practice that continues beyond the amount needed to achieve a certain performance criterion.
Massed Practice
A practice schedule in which the amount of rest between practice sessions or trials is very short.
Distributed Practice
A practice schedule in which the amount of rest between practice sessions or trials is relatively long.
Continuous Skills
Skills (e.g., swimming, juggling) that benefit more from distributed practice schedules during intertrial intervals.
Memory Consolidation
A long-term memory storage process that requires time, supporting the benefit of distributed practice across days.

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