The acquisition of striking motor skill in school physical education: a study of learning cues as educational content

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of verbal cues on the acquisition of a striking skill, focusing on their perceptual and motor aspects. The sample of this study was made of 84 public school students aged between six to eight years old from three classrooms of the same school. Each classroom constituted a group: no cue, perceptual cue and motor cue group. The experiment was carried out in three phases: pre-test, classes with specific cue and post-test. The group which received perceptual cue showed better results. Thus, it was verified that the effects of cues depend on the specificity of the task concerning its information processing demands. It was concluded that task´s specificity related cue demonstrated its potential as knowledge for the students to guide them towards improvement of the quality of movement and confirms the possibility of its inclusion as a content to be taught in the school physical education.