Motor Skill Acquisition, Retention, and Transfer in Adults with Profound Mental Retardation

Abstract

The purpose was to examine whether adults with profound mental retardation (PMR) have the ability to learn and transfer a motor skill to a novel situation. In Experiment 1, novel task transfer performance was examined. Six male adults with PMR threw beanbags three different distances during acquisition, followed by four novel transfer distances and a novel implement (a horse shoe). In Experiment 2, a 48-hr and a 1-week delayed retention test was used with 6 different males with PMR who practiced three beanbag-throwing distances and then performed two familiar and two novel distances for each retention test. Analyses indicated that, with concurrent visual information of the target, adults with PMR can throw accurately on retention and transfer tests and can generalize beanbag throwing skill to horseshoe-throwing. The prototype model of memory representation seems to explain the findings better than the exemplar model. In addition, random practice of skill variations appears to be an effective teaching strategy.

Functional improvement and social participation through sports activity for children with mental retardation

“…[14][15] However, a different group of scientists have questioned the efficacy of the hypothesis and stated that 'the whole endorphin-runner's-high hypothesis is the scientific version of an urban legend' and is without a universally proven scientific evidence. 16 Other studies [17][18][19][20][21][22] cite sport as an effective means of training that affect the reaction time positively for children with mild to moderate retardation. In addition, a study 23 reveals the existence of some correlation between developmental level and persistence, attention span and emotional control.…”

Active Prior Tactile Knowledge Transfer for Learning Tactual Properties of New Objects

“…By transferring the prior tactile knowledge, or prior tactile exploratory action experiences, we can largely reduce the amount of exploratory actions required to discriminate among new objects. In this way, we humans save a lot of time and energy, and recognize new objects with high accuracy [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 ].…”