The technique of using the Reaction timer was standardised by the investigator giving a practical example before the tests took place. Experimental Design Using the Simple Reaction Timer, two investigations were set up. The first was that the foreperiod of the onset of stimulus was varied for every individual trial so that no learning occurred. The second was set up in exactly the same way but after every trial the recorded reaction time was verbally given to the subject. In the investigation the foreperiod was set variably between 1 and 5 seconds.
Procedure The equipment was set up as described in the apparatus and the experimental design. The subject was sat down horizontal to the Reaction timer. The foreperiod time was set to its required value. The button on the basin timer was pressed and the foreperiod was then started and the subject's aim was to press their button as fast as they could when the light on the timer was illuminated. The reaction time was then recorded and no knowledge of results was given to the subject in the first test where as they were in the second test.
Each subject performed each of the two tests ten times. Results FB = Feedback (Knowledge of Results) Mean RT Trial No FB FB Discussion This investigation was motivated by many studies and claims but most of all by Schmidt and colleagues (1989), which provided suggestions that some conditions of KR enhance performance during the performance of a simple motor skill.
Schmidt also defined the two ways in which KR guides the learner towards the correct action. The first of which was, the beneficial effect, which states that immediate performance is facilitated because the subject is rapidly guided towards the goal. The second is that of a degrading effect which sees the learner depending on KR to perform a task. "When KR guides performance, the information processing activities of the subject operate in a way that is either different than under nonguided conditions, or they operate to learn something that is different" (Schmidt et al. , 1979).
The intention of the study was to discover whether or not introduction of knowledge of results (KR) had any effect on the reaction time of the performer. As seen from the graph, the study supports the theory that reaction time decreases with the introduction of knowledge of results. There was very little improvement without KR. This could be due to the familiarity of the task. Observation of the related T- test that was done shows that there is a significant difference in mean errors in reaction time between both conditions. This shows that KR aids the performance of the task, therefore decreases reaction time.
H. N. Zelaznik and R. Hahn discovered a decrease in reaction time due to knowledge of results in their investigations:" Recent reaction time analysis of motor programming has utilized a precue stimulus that provides advance information about some or all of the upcoming attributes for the upcoming response. "(H. N. Zelaznik, 1985). The first test reaction times remained at a virtually constant score whereas the second test produced a constant decrease in mean error until the seventh or eighth trial where a plateau is seen. This supports the theory that anticipation is eliminated when no KR is present.
As discussed in the introduction, when there is a stimulus that can be predicted, there is more time to be spent on concentrating on that single stimulus, whereas, if the stimulus can't be predicted then more time must be spent on information processing and filtering information to work out the correct response. During the 1930's there was some debate as to whether the effect of practice was to increase or decrease reliable individual differences but it was concluded that different tasks have different effects on individual differences (Woodrow, 1939a), so the question wasn't taken into account during the investigation.
The question of practice was further discarded due to the test only comprising of ten trials for each test. To take this investigation further, the idea of learning can be incorporated into the experiment by performing a retention test to discover whether or not the subjects that performed the task with KR have learned the response more effectively.
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