Abstract:
The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of observational expert and beginner model on learning basketball free throw skill in those with different levels of imagination capability. For this purpose, 30 students with high imagination capability and 30 students with low imagination capability were selected among volunteered students and divided into 6 groups. The free throw accuracy and model were measured with 10 throws at the pre and post-test stages. At the exercise stage, the participants also performed 240 throws based on the specific protocol of the group. The experimental groups watched the video of the Expert or beginner model at the beginning of each exercise block while the control group did not watch any kind of video. The results of multivariate covariance analysis showed that the accuracy and the model of throws in different groups were significantly different. Those with high imagination capability benefit more from observational learning and learned better than those with low imagination capability. Also, those with high imagination capability significantly benefit from Expert model observation. The results of this research show that in addition to the characteristics of the observed model, which can have a great impact on observational learning, the observers’ characteristics are also very influential in this. One of these effective characteristics was the individual's imagination ability; people with lower abilities were more likely to encounter problems with the use of observational learning. Therefore, developing of individual's imagination ability is necessary for this type of learning.
Machine summary:
Department of Motor Behaviour, Sport Science Research Institute of Iran (SSRI), Tehran, Iran Abstract The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of observational expert and beginner model on learning basketball free throw skill in those with different levels of imagination capability.
The studies that have been conducted on the observation of the Expert model have shown that this model facilitates learning a motor skill (Al-Abood et al.
However, in order to study the significance or insignificance of these scores, inferential statistics tests were used to determine the observational effect of an Expert and beginner model on the acquisition and retention of free-throwing basketball skills in those with different levels of imagination capability.
The results of this study showed that, regardless of the type of model (Expert and beginner), those with high imagination capability have better performance than those with low imagination capability, in other words, the two groups of high imagination capability – Expert model and high imagination capability - beginner most benefit from observational learning.
But since the participants in this study were all beginners and the priority of beginners in the learning process is to collect information about the performance and acquisition of a general model of motion (the skill function of observational learning), and according to Adams, the training model should be provided correctly and properly in order to develop a strong perceptual drive, accordingly an Expert model should be used when showing skills.