Aims: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the combination of constant and variable practice when both, motor program and parameters on absolute and relative dimensions of a task, are manipulated. Method: Twenty undergraduate students, aged between 19 and 24 years, participated in this study. Two groups practiced the task of pressing four keys of a numeric keyboard with total and relative times specified under constant conditions in the first part of the acquisition phase and under block conditions in the second part when one group varied parameters and another varied motor programs. Results: Both groups improved parameters and motor program measures during the acquisition phase. In the retention test, the parameters variation resulted in higher accuracy on motor program measure than variation of motor programs. Conclusion: Both combinations improve parameters and motor program accuracy. Moreover, the maintenance of GMP during the variation phase contributes to strengthening it.

This study aims to investigate the construct validity and reliability of the checklist for qualitative analysis of the overhand serve in Volleyball. Fifty-five male subjects aged 13-17 years participated in the study. The overhand serve was analyzed using the checklist proposed by Meira Junior (2003), which analyzes the pattern of serve movement in four phases: (I) initial position, (II) ball lifting, (III) ball attacking, and (IV) finalization. Construct validity was analyzed using confirmatory factorial analysis and reliability through the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. The construct validity was supported by confirmatory factor analysis with the RMSEA results (0.037 [confidence interval 90% = 0.020-0.040]), CFI (0.970) and TLI (0.950) indicating good fit of the model. In relation to reliability, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.661, being this value considered acceptable. Among the items on the checklist, ball lifting and attacking showed higher factor loadings, 0.69 and 0.99, respectively. In summary, the checklist for the qualitative analysis of the overhand serve of Meira Junior (2003) can be considered a valid and reliable instrument for use in research in the field of Sports Sciences.

Objective: Elaborate, validate and test the intra and inter-expert reliability of observational scales for the examination of the volleyball techniques, floating serve with support, simple offensive blocking and underhand defense. Methods: Sixteen coaches of the brazilian national volleyball team with more than ten years of practice in this sport, participated in the validation. Each coach evaluated five actions of each volleyball technique, performed by five federated volleyball athletes. Multiple Kappa test (KM) was used for statistical analysis of inter and intra-expert agreement strength and the significance level adopted was p <0.05. Results: The three scales obtained agreement indexes (≥87.5%) for content validity. Regarding intra-expert reliability, the results demonstrated that the observational, blocks, and defense scales had good agreement strength (0.40≤KM≤0.59). Regarding the inter-expert reliability, the observational scales serve (KM=0.75) and defense (KM=0.66) presente very good agreement strength and the observational scale block (KM=0.82) obtained excellent concordance strength. Conclusions: The scales are reliable and suitable for the analysis of motor skills floating serve with support, simple offensive blocking and underhand defense.

The Motor Behavior (MB) area investigates the neuropsychological processes of the organization of the motor response in terms of learning, control and motor development from which three research sub-areas emerged called Motor Learning (ML), Motor Control (MC) and Motor Development (MD). This study aimed to describe the intellectual production in the sub-areas ML, MC and MD in 2018 and to identify the current profile of the MB area. The intellectual production in the sub-areas of the MB was organized, by stratum, type of task and adherence with the CAPES area 21 journals. There were 53 articles published by 51 researchers in the MB area linked to Postgraduate programs in Physical Education in 2018. The distribution of articles by sub-areas was represented by 30.18% ML, 54.72% MC and 15.10% MD. The MC sub-area presented 86% of articles published in the upper stratum, the ML sub-area with 37%, followed by the MD sub-area with 13%. The average of the three sub-areas resulted in 83.02% of studies with a simple task and only 16.98% with a complex task. The greater number of publications with low adherence combined with the greater number of researches with simple tasks seems to demonstrate the researchers' difficulty in approaching the knowledge produced in the area of MB for undergraduate students in Physical Education.