The Effect Of Need Achievement And Competition Trait Anxiety On The Performance Of A Manipulative Motor Task Under Noncompetitive And Competitive Conditions

Author : Leonard Manley Wenkel
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (144 download)

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Download or read book The Interaction of Competition and Ability Levels in the Performance and Learning of a Motor Task written by Leonard Manley Wenkel and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this study was to investigate the interaction of aspects of competition and varying ability levels upon the performance and learning of a motor task. To accomplish this end, four hypotheses were formulated and tested: 1. A competitive situation in the early stages of the learning of a motor skill will retard performance. 2. A competitive situation in the late stages of the learning of a motor skill will facilitate performance. 3. The effects of a competitive situation cease to be detrimental early in the stages of learning a motor task when the initial ability level of the individual is high. 4. The effects of a competitive situation cease to be detrimental late in the stages of learning a motor task when the initial ability level of the individual is low. Seventy-two grade eight boys were dichotomized into high and low ability groups, on the basis of performance on a five trial pretest on a stabilometer. The high and low ability groups were then subdivided so as to form thirty-six member control (i.e 0, non-competitive) and experimental (i.e., competitive) groups for each ability level. Each group performed twenty-five 20-second trials on the stabilometer task under the appropriate test conditions. The twenty-five trial scores were grouped into five 5-trial performance stages to facilitate analysis of the results. The high ability groups performed consistently better than the low ability groups. Competition did not influence overall performance; however, it had a detrimental effect upon the low ability group's performance during the second stage and a beneficial effect upon the high ability group's performance during the fourth stage. Although learning occurred in all groups, the low ability subjects learned at a faster rate than the high ability subjects. Competition had a significant effect on the rate of learning. It retarded learning in the early trials and facilitated it in the late trials. In terms of amount of learning, the low ability groups learned significantly more than the high ability groups and the competitive groups learned more than the non-competitive groups over the twenty-five trials. When learning was divided into early (i.e., first-half) learning and late (last-half) learning, two effects reached significance. The low ability subjects learned more than the high ability subjects during early learning and the low ability-competitive subjects learned more than the low ability-non-competitive subjects during late learning. No statistically significant support was derived from this study for the first two hypotheses, however, the performance curves did indicate a trend in the hypothesized directions. The final two hypotheses were supported by the results.