Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to compare motor skill acquisition between two learning environments; an environment in which learners determined the type of model or time of receiving it and one which was controlled by the researcher. Ninety male college aged participants were randomly divided into 5 groups; 4 groups of 15 participants and one of 30. Participants' conditions in terms of the type of model used (visual or auditory model) and control environment (external control, self control in selecting model, self control in time of receiving model) was different from other groups. Participants practiced 60 trails of a sequential timing task. The result indicated that auditory model led to better learning of the timing task than visual model. In addition, for both visual and auditory modeling, providing self-controlled conditions led to an enhanced performance in the overall and absolute timing error in retention test compared to externally controlled conditions, but in relative timing no significant difference was observed between self controlled and external controlled conditions. © IDOSI Publications, 2012.