A Comparison of New Skill Acquisition: Athletes and Musicians

Pseudoarithmetic has previously been used to investigate new skill acquisition. The current research extends learning research with old and young adults to young athletes and musicians using a pseudoarithmetic task. The group with the combination of attributes (i.e., athletic musicians) was hypothesized to show the fastest learning. Alphabet arithmetic was used to assess reaction time based learning curves. No differences among groups were found in the participants’ slopes and y-intercepts from the log-log learning curves or block by block accuracy. Nevertheless, post-hoc analyses revealed differences among type of athletic activity (collapsed across musician status), such that non-endurance athletes learned faster than endurance athletes.