Using
 Purpose
▪ What question were the authors trying to answer?
▪ What was the primary relationship being studied?
 Methods
▪ Subtitles: Participants; Task/Apparatus; Procedure
▪ How did they get their sample? How many participants
(ages, gender; ethnicity, etc...)? What equipment was
used? What was the design? What did participants do?
 Results
▪ What did they find? Did they support their hypothesis?

Brief details:
Practice golf putt 500 times
2. Feedback at a. supraliminal; b. subjective; c. objective
thresholds (speed of exposure controlled)
3. Does putting improve? Do they gather declarative
knowledge?
1.

Expectations:
 Objective threshold: no improvement; no rule learning.
 Subjective threshold: improvement; no rule learning
 Supraliminal threshold: improvement & rule learning

Participants
 48 with normal/corrected vision
 Mean age 20.4 years, range 19-35 years
 All had never played golf

Task/Apparatus
 Golf putter, putting green (indoor, artificial)
 Target circle (45cm diameter) 2.7 m from P
 Curtain raised 8cm above ground, 1m from P,
prevented vision of putting surface
 Liquid crystal glasses occluded vision of ball after
contact with putter (remained opaque 300ms)
 Feedback presented via tachistoscope

Procedure
 Phase 1 – threshold detection
▪ A. Fixation slide (5ooms); B. Stimulus slide (varied
timings); C. Pattern mask (500ms)
▪ Stimulus starts at 100ms, reduces
▪ Stimuli presented in blocks of 20
▪ P had to identify the location of dot
▪ Confidence of ID taken at end of block
▪ “I was completely guessing” (20% chance) to “confident” (100%)
▪ Objective threshold (in ms) reached when success level
dropped to 20%

Procedure
 Phase 1 – threshold detection
▪ Subjective threshold achieved by raising stimulus
presentation time
▪ Subjective confidence still at 20%, but response accuracy greater
than 20% = subjective threshold
 Phase 2 – motor learning
▪ Randomly assigned to feedback condition
▪ Putt 500x

Procedure
 Phase 2 – motor learning
▪ After every putt:
▪
▪
▪
▪
300ms blocked view
look into tachistoscope
Fixation slide (500ms)
Feedback slide (duration varied depending on feedback
condition)
▪ Pattern mask (500ms)
▪ Say where they think the “ball” appeared
▪ After every 100 putts:
▪ Confidence of accuracy – 20% to 100%

Procedure
 At end of phase 2, P’s reported any rules, methods
or techniques used.
 50 trial transfer test (normal vision to same
target).
Feedback awareness
Putting accuracy
NB: no difference in number of
rules was found, though
supraliminal (M = 1.76) tended to
have more than the other 2
conditions (M’s = .76, .80)

What were the main independent and
dependent variables in the study?
 Dependent:
▪ putting accuracy; stimulus id confidence; stimulus id
accuracy; number of rules reported
 Independent:
▪ Feedback condition (level of consciousness of feedback)

What was/were the relationship(s) of interest
in the study?
 Can motor learning proceed with feedback
presented at subliminal levels?

What were the main hypotheses in the study
(if any)? Did the researchers support their
hypotheses?
 That motor learning would only be possible in 2 of
the conditions (supraliminal, subjective)
▪ supported
 That declarative knowledge would only be
accrued in one condition (supraliminal)
▪ Not supported (none showed declarative knowledge)

How good is the external validity of the study? (use the
guiding questions)
 To what places/settings/people/times are they generalizing?
▪ All people? Outside lab? Age? Task? Stimulus type? Type of sense?
Availability of immediate other feedback (proprioception tied with vision)
▪ These are all potential “moderators” of the effect...discuss to evaluate EV
▪ Sampling strategy seems to be volunteers, probably students (kinesiology
students?)

Key question:
 Does the role of consciousness of feedback in learning differ for any of
these moderators when comparing the value used within the study to
that not used in the study?
▪ E.g. Does the role of consciousness of feedback in learning remain the same when
the sensory feedback is disrupted and simplified (as in the study), and when it is in its
“natural” state?
▪ This is brief – you should go into more detail

How good is the construct validity of the
study? (use the guiding questions)
 Constructs:
▪ Putting accuracy
▪ Measured using % balls stopping in target circle
▪ Pretty crude
▪ But the results showed the expected outcome – could this
crudeness have changed the results of the study?
▪ Possibly – differences between supraliminal and subjective
threshold groups may have been found with better DV.

How good is the construct validity of the
study? (use the guiding questions)
 Constructs:
▪ Stimulus identification accuracy.
▪ Intended to assess the degree to which people can correctly
identify a stimulus.
▪ Assessed by # of correct IDs per set of 100 trials.
▪ Has face validity...and perhaps some criterion validity in as much
as it behaved the way it was supposed to.

How good is the construct validity of the study? (use
the guiding questions)
 Constructs:
▪ Stimulus identification confidence.
▪ Intended to assess the degree to which people are confident they have
correctly identified a stimulus.
▪ Assessed by one measure of confidence per set of 100 trials.
▪ Has face validity...and perhaps some criterion validity in as much as it
behaved the way it was supposed to.
▪ But one measure every 100 trials? Might the ones they were more
confident on be the trials they identified more accurately?
▪ If so, this would change the interpretation of the study’s meaning
entirely.
▪ Could be asked every time – better.

How good is the construct validity of the study? (use
the guiding questions)
 Constructs:
▪ Number of rules reported.
▪ Intended to assess accumulation of declarative knowledge.
▪ Assessed after phase 2 (motor learning) but before transfer.
▪ Seems crude...only measured once, allows for forgetting (learning
phase 500 trials)
▪ Are there better alternatives? Has it worked elsewhere?
▪ Asking more frequently (within practice) would increase declarative consideration
– could harm the experiment.
▪ But still might change the outcome of that part of the experiment?
 But has been used successfully in many other studies.
 Perhaps the groups really didn’t acquire any knowledge (this is what the
authors think)
▪ Type of feedback
▪ Intended to present feedback either with or without awareness, such that the
participant either can or cannot use the information
▪ All of phase one used operationalize this construct
▪ Has both face and content validity
▪ Also has some criterion validity, as they showed data of the awareness and
accuracy of the subjective judgments
▪ What about the unnatural environment in which the feedback was presented?
(subjects never actually saw the ball)
 Could the unnatural feedback type (extrinsic to the task, rather then integrated
with other senses) have altered its salience in some way?
▪ One weakness is in potential for group averages to mislead.
 Could the increased performance of the subjective threshold group be because
they were occasionally conscious of the stimulus, rather than that they were
continually unconscious of it?
 Would change the interpretation of the results, rather than the results
themselves.

How good is the internal validity of the study? (use the
guiding questions)
 Design
O
O
O
R
R
R
X1
X2
X3
Op
Op
Op
OT
OT
OT
 Use of random assignment and multiple groups suggests only social
threats (and 1 or 2 others) remain.
 Unlikely that mortality played a part – no drop outs reported
 Can’t see how social threats relevant – all tested individually
 Experimenter bias?

Internal validity quite good.