Effect of Self-Controlled Feedback on Motor Learning and Its Association with Metacognitive Ability

Self-controlled feedback promotes motor skills among patients with bodies altered by disease or injury. However, mechanisms underlying its effectiveness remain unexplored. This study determined whether metacognitive ability is involved in the learning benefits of self-controlled feedback during motor skill acquisition. Twenty-eight healthy adults (14 women; mean age = 21.6 ± 0.5 years), assigned to a self-control group (which received knowledge of the results only when requested) or a yoked group (which received knowledge of the results with the paired participants in the self-control group), performed a golf putting task. The experiment comprised a pre-test, practice trials, and a retention test administered 24 h after practice completion. Metacognitive ability was assessed after practice using the Adult Metacognition Scale. The self-control group showed greater improvement from the pre-test (V = 4.5, p < 0.01) and scored higher than the yoked group on the retention test (U = 51, p = 0.02). No between-group differences were found for any metacognitive subscale scores. Metacognitive monitoring was positively correlated with putting performance improvement only in the yoked group (p < 0.05, r = 0.56). The self-control group showed enhanced motor learning compared with the yoked group. Metacognitive monitoring was associated with learning only when feedback timing was externally determined, suggesting that self-control benefits learners with lower metacognitive monitoring.