Comment on Czyż et al. (2024) on Contextual Interference in Motor Learning
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51224/SRXIV.435Keywords:
interference effect, contextual interference, random practice, blocked practice, applied setting, sport, motor skills, meta-analysis, systematic review, commentaryAbstract
On June 10th, 2024, a paper by Czyż et al. titled “High contextual interference improves retention in motor learning: systematic review and meta-analysis” was published in the esteemed journal, Scientific Reports. Given its relevance to our research area and its close similarity to two recent meta-analyses our research group published on the effect of contextual interference (CI) on the acquisition and retention of motor skills in sport contexts (Ammar et al., 2023; Ammar et al., 2024), we read it with great interest. While we find the topic to be timely and the paper to be well-written, several concerns have arisen from our review of Czyż et al. This commentary summarizes the main concerns.
Among other issues, we were surprised by the unsubstantiated offensive statements against our previous work, such as “the review of Ammar et al. cannot be considered reliable and valid,” and by the definitive conclusion that “the CI effect is a robust phenomenon in motor learning,” which is not supported by the statistical findings of the paper. We have detailed our concerns regarding this paper in the manuscript, which we believe would be of interest to the motor learning community.
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