School of Human Kinetics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Centre for Neuroscience Studies, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2017 Dec;24(6):1879-1888. doi: 10.3758/s13423-017-1250-7.
Lewthwaite et al. (2015) reported that the learning benefits of exercising choice (i.e., their self-controlled condition) are not restricted to task-relevant features (e.g., feedback). They found that choosing one's golf ball color (Exp. 1) or choosing which of two tasks to perform at a later time plus which of two artworks to hang (Exp. 2) resulted in better retention than did being denied these same choices (i.e., yoked condition). The researchers concluded that the learning benefits derived from choice, whether irrelevant or relevant to the to-be-learned task, are predominantly motivational because choice is intrinsically rewarding and satisfies basic psychological needs. However, the absence of a group that made task-relevant choices and the lack of psychological measures significantly weakened their conclusions. Here, we investigated how task-relevant and task-irrelevant choices affect motor-skill learning. Participants practiced a spatiotemporal motor task in either a task-relevant group (choice over feedback schedule), a task-irrelevant group (choice over the color of an arm-wrap plus game selection), or a no-choice group. The results showed significantly greater learning in the task-relevant group than in both the task-irrelevant and no-choice groups, who did not differ significantly. Critically, these learning differences were not attributed to differences in perceptions of competence or autonomy, but instead to superior error-estimation abilities. These results challenge the perspective that motivational influences are the root cause of self-controlled learning advantages. Instead, the findings add to the growing evidence highlighting that the informational value gained from task-relevant choices makes a greater relative contribution to these advantages than motivational influences do.
Lewthwaite 等人（2015 年）报告称，行使选择的学习益处（即自我控制条件）不仅限于与任务相关的特征（例如反馈）。他们发现，选择自己的高尔夫球颜色（实验 1）或选择稍后执行的两个任务中的哪一个以及要悬挂的两幅艺术品中的哪一个（实验 2）比被剥夺这些相同的选择（即被束缚条件）导致更好的保留。研究人员得出结论，选择带来的学习益处，无论是与要学习的任务无关还是相关，主要是动机性的，因为选择本身就是有回报的，可以满足基本的心理需求。然而，缺乏一个进行任务相关选择的组，以及缺乏心理测量手段，大大削弱了他们的结论。在这里，我们研究了任务相关和任务无关的选择如何影响运动技能学习。参与者在任务相关组（反馈计划的选择）、任务无关组（手臂包裹颜色的选择加游戏选择）或无选择组中练习时空运动任务。结果表明，任务相关组的学习明显优于任务无关组和无选择组，后两组之间没有明显差异。关键是，这些学习差异不是归因于能力或自主性的差异，而是归因于卓越的错误估计能力。这些结果挑战了这样一种观点，即动机影响是自我控制学习优势的根本原因。相反，这些发现增加了越来越多的证据，强调了从任务相关选择中获得的信息价值对这些优势的相对贡献大于动机影响。
