Applying contextual interference to snowboarding skills.

This investigation was designed to apply contextual interference to acquisition of snowboarding skills. 20 participants completed several acquisition stages lasting about 2 hours while either alternating the direction of the turn within each stage or completing the whole stage while attempting turns in one direction, then repeating the stage for the other direction of turn. Following acquisition, all participants returned 1 wk. later for a retention test. Alternating practice yielded better performance during acquisition and retention as measured by the arc and form attained within the turns. Because this differs from typical contextual interference effects, it is suggested that the relation between the skills may have affected the results. Negative transfer operating within blocked practice and increased between-task comparisons within alternating practice may be related to the similarity between the tasks.