STUDIES IN RESEARCH METHODOLOGY. III. PERSISTENCE OF SEQUENTIAL EFFECTS DESPITE EXTENDED PRACTICE

Certain experimental designs are ba ed upon the assumption that performance level becomes stabilized after a prolonged period of practic . This a sumption was tested by taking a long series of repeated measurements upon a single subject for the performance of each of several constant tasks, each task being tested singly in a separate series of measurements. Results showed that after thousands of practice trials on a simple task a subject ay still be learning or showing other sequential effects in performance. The e effects may disappear on one day only to reappear on the next. Therefore it i extremely doubtful that practice to an asymptote should be regarded as either an efficient or an effective method of eliminating sequential effects from an experiment proper. Author