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Although the ultimate success of surgery depends on the use of adequate psychomotor skills, the evaluation of the abilities of a trainee and the teaching of these skills has not been systematized. The choice of a trainee in surgery should be based at least partially on his innate abilities, and his training should be begun at an appropriate level. The procedures he may do should be analyzed to determine the skills required for their performance. Then these skills should be taught specifically, initially in non-threatening situations such as laboratory settings, and their acquisition assessed so that he can be progressed to more advanced work at the appropriate time. Ultimately a decision must be made whether to train a candidate to a skill level or whether to train him for a set period and then counsel him regarding which procedures he has the skills to perform. There are well developed concepts in educational psychology that may be used in developing improved methods to assess and train prospective surgeons.

Middle school students (n = 466) participated in a year-long multi-activity physical education program in which classes were coeducational in the fall semester and same-sex in the spring semester. Following participation, students reflected back across the year and anonymously completed a questionnaire that elicited opinions from students regarding their affinity toward physical education, perceived abilities, and preferences for coeducational and same-sex. The findings indicated that males perceived themselves to have significantly more skill, strength, and endurance than females. Females perceived themselves to be significantly more overweight than males. Males also liked physical education significantly better, while females exhibited a systematic decrease in liking physical education from 6th to 8th grade. The findings are discussed in terms of implications for teaching and teacher education and the need for future research on coeducational and same-sex class structures in physical education.

The variability-of-practice hypothesis, a major prediction of Schmidt's (1975) motor schema theory, was tested in an attempt to investigate motor-schema formation. In addition, schema retention was observed after a 2-week retention interval. The task involved preschool children in tossing a bean bag for appropriate distance. Four treatment groups received 100 practice trials equally divided over five days. Variation was provided by varying the weights of the bean bags. The testing situations involved tossing a criterion weighted bean bag as well as a novel weighted bean bag which none of the groups had experienced previously. In addition, all groups were tested on a new but similar task. The results supported the variability-of-practice hypothesis in terms of schema formation and transfer to novel tasks in the same movement class. After a two-week retention interval, loss in performance was significantly less for the group with variability of practice than all other groups.

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