University of Twente Student Theses
Practice Effects and Transfer during Chord Skill Acquisition : A Chording Study
Zweistra, Emile E. (2023) Practice Effects and Transfer during Chord Skill Acquisition : A Chording Study.
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| Abstract: | The present study investigated the mechanisms that allow for transfer of chord skill following unimanual practice. Chording refers to a muscle synergy in which a collective of keys is simultaneously pressed. It was hypothesised that with practice, a motoric effector-independent representation is developed (as opposed to a spatial representation) that encodes hand postures. As such, a behavioural reaction time experiment was conducted with a sample of 16 participants. During the practice phase, proficiency was attained with a set of 5 unimanual chords that were executed with either 2, 3 or 4 fingers. During the test phase, each participant executed in addition to the practise chords, mirror and novel chords with both the trained and untrained hand. The results suggest that neither a motoric (hand-posture) nor spatial effector-independent representation is developed that allows for transfer of practice effects. However, these findings are deemed inconclusive as statistical power was likely to be limited due to the highly variable sample. Lastly, a significant cost of reaction time for practised chords executed by the trained hand was observed upon introducing novel and mirror chords in the test phase. This suggests the presence of an effect that was not accounted for and may therefore have contributed to the lack of significant findings. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 77 psychology |
| Programme: | Psychology BSc (56604) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/95234 |
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