Improving Performance Without Training: A Three Step Approach

Condition 1 showed that employees recorded high percentages of completed tasks; and task performance was shown to slightly improve. At that point in the project, recording accuracy was at it's highest level. Condition 2 illustrated a continuance of high employee records of completed tasks but also showed that actual task performance considerably increased so that there was greater self-recording accuracy. Then, during Condition 3, actual task performance increased more so that it even more closely reflected self-recorded measures. Each of the steps discussed thus far could be sufficient individually to facilitate accurate self-recording and task performance gains, although each appeared to have gained additional strength by being collectively applied. The cost of the present organizational intervention was very low. The costs included material duplication costs and approximately 30 minutes of management time per day. Management time was used to make concession observations (management records), compute performance data, and provide feedback to the employee. Employees worked the same number of hours as in Baseline. Based on this breakdown, the approximate weekly cost of this project was about $30.00. The total cost could be reduced further, perhaps, by monitoring less frequently and reducing the frequency of feedback sessions as employee performance stabilized at higher levels. Thus, the longer this project would run, the less expensive it might become. The steps implemented during this project might easily be applied to other jobs that produce easily observable outputs and could also be applied to other work settings. Future research efforts that would identify cost-effective ways to stimulate and maintain high levels of accurate self-recording might provide today's managers several options that could all yield accurate data for organizational management. Other research efforts centered on specific analyses of participatory standard setting, peer reinforcement, and self-reinforcement for task performance could provide additional insight into the areas of job analysis and employee productivity. Lastly, increased knowledge about the long term effects of self-recording could be gained through future research methods that first established high recording accuracies and task performance levels, then evaluated maintenance procedures for these methods. Implications of successive research studies which clearly show that employee performance can be improved by rewarding performers for accurate self-recording could be profound.     

Effect of verbal instructions and image size on visual search strategies in basketball free throw shooting

We assessed the effects on basketball free throw performance of two types of verbal directions with an external attentional focus. Novices (n = 16) were pre-tested on free throw performance and assigned to two groups of similar ability (n = 8 in each). Both groups received verbal instructions with an external focus on either movement dynamics (movement form) or movement effects (e.g. ball trajectory relative to basket). The participants also observed a skilled model performing the task on either a small or large screen monitor, to ascertain the effects of visual presentation mode on task performance. After observation of six videotaped trials, all participants were given a post-test. Visual search patterns were monitored during observation and cross-referenced with performance on the pre- and post-test. Group effects were noted for verbal instructions and image size on visual search strategies and free throw performance. The 'movement effects' group saw a significant improvement in outcome scores between the pre-test and post-test. These results supported evidence that this group spent more viewing time on information outside the body than the 'movement dynamics' group. Image size affected both groups equally with more fixations of shorter duration when viewing the small screen. The results support the benefits of instructions when observing a model with an external focus on movement effects, not dynamics.     

Information--movement coupling: implications for the organization of research and practice during acquisition of self-paced extrinsic timing skills

Information--movement coupling is a fundamental concept, integral to theorizing on the coordination of goal-directed activity in ecological psychology. In this paper, we examine the implications of this concept for the design of experimental research and the organization of practice during the acquisition of movement coordination in sport tasks. The task vehicle for our analysis is interceptive actions, in particular self-paced extrinsic timing tasks exemplified by serving in sports such as volleyball. Recent research highlighting the relevance of information--movement coupling for the process of practice in sport is discussed. We conclude that information--movement coupling represents an important principle for the structural organization of research and practice in self-paced extrinsic timing tasks and that further work is required to verify its significance across a range of sport movements.