The Influence of External Feedback on Skill Learning
Yadi Sunaryadi and Hadi Sartono
Faculty of Sport and Health Education, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Jln. Dr. Setiabudhi No. 229 Bandung, Indonesia
Keywords: External Feedback, Skill Learning, KR, KP.
Abstract: External feedback is an important component of the interaction between coach or teacher and athlete or
student in motor skill learning. Based on literature review, the explanation is made that the effective use of
external feedback depends on understanding the various effects of external feedback on motor skill learning
and the conditions characterizing the occurrence of each effect. Four distinct relationships between external
feedback and motor skill learning are presented: External feedback is important for motor skills learning; it
is not needed to learn some skills; for some skills it enables the learner to acquire the skill faster or achieve a
higher level of performance than would be possible without it; it can be provided in such a way that it
hinders skill learning.
1 INTRODUCTION
It seems that practitioners do not fully understand
that external feedback can have a variety of
influences on skill learning, positive or negative
(Magill et al., 1991). In fact, external feedback has
traditionally been given a two- part role in skill
learning. One part is that external feedback is
necessary for effective skill learning to occur. The
second is that external feedback is beneficial for
skill learning (Magill, 1993). The impact of the
view projected from motor skill learning theories
and research that external feedback is necessary and
beneficial for skill learning can be seen in the
pedagogical literature. For example, in a highly
regarded teaching methods textbook for physical
education teachers, Siedentop et al. (1984), stated
that "it has been known for some time that feedback
is necessary for learning.... Physical educators must
learn to be expert deliverers of feedback". In another
well-respected textbook, Rink (1985) told
prospective physical education teachers that'
'feedback is an absolutely essential ingredient for
learning". The point to be made in this paper is that
the statements are incorrect and that the statements
made by the textbook authors cited are at worst
incorrect and at best incomplete. To make this point,
research literature will be reviewed to describe the
specific effects of external feedback on skill
learning. What will be seen is that feedback is not
always necessary and beneficial for skill learning. In
fact, four different relationships between external
feedback and skill learning exist (Magill, 1993).
Fortunately, these different relationships can be
related to specific characteristics of the skills being
learned and, in some cases, to the characteristics of
the learners to whom the feedback is directed. From
a motor skill learning perspective, this categorization
of relationships provides a more appropriate base on
which to develop theory and research. From a
pedagogical perspective, viewing external feedback
in this way provides direction for determining the
appropriate use of external feedback to help
establish optimal learning conditions (Tan et al.,
1994).
Before looking at the specific relationships
between external feedback and skill learning, it will
be instructive to consider some bases for questioning
the traditional role given external feedback. While
the discussion about the different types of influences
of external feedback on skill learning will reveal
empirical evidence arguing against the traditional
role, there are additional reasons for expecting that
external feedback may not always be necessary and
beneficial for skill learning. These reasons are
revealed in both motor learning and physical
education pedagogy literature. The first reason
comes from an influential review of the KR
literature by Salmoni et al. (1984). This review sets
the stage for the present discussion because it
established that the commonly referred to principles
of KR "are at best in need of some conceptual
466
Sunaryadi, Y. and Sartono, H.
The Influence of External Feedback on Skill Learning.
In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Sports Science, Health and Physical Education (ICSSHPE 2017) - Volume 2, pages 466-471
ISBN: 978-989-758-317-9
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

rearrangement and at worst largely incorrect". They
demonstrated that different conclusions about these
KR principles could be derived when the research
literature was examined in terms of whether the KR
effects were on performance during practice or on
performance during retention or transfer tests. While
this important review did not suggest altering the
view that external feedback is necessary and
beneficial for skill learning, it did open the door for
concern about all traditionally held views related to
the influence of external feedback on skill learning.
A second cause for questioning came from a
theoretical perspective of skill learning and control
that is an alternative to the theories of Adams and
Schmidt. Known as action theory or dynamic
systems theory (Meijer and Roth, 1988), this view of
skill control argues that the theories of Adams and
Schmidt have ignored both the wealth of
environmental information available to people who
are performing skills and how that information
influences skill learning and control. As a result, this
view downplays the role of external feedback in skill
learning and emphasizes the positive role played by
environmental information in the interaction
between the sensory-perceptual system and the
motor-control system (Buekers et al., 1992).
Because individuals use this environmental
information to guide their actions, the need for
external information takes a secondary role in skill
learning (Fishman and Tobey, 1978). Hence, the
traditional role given external feedback is dismissed
and a lesser role is proposed.
Finally, the belief that external feedback is
necessary and beneficial for skill learning can be
questioned by considering what occurs within a
physical education class environment. According to
teacher behavior research in physical education, a
teacher gives only about one or two feedback
statements per minute in a class, and these
statements are not equally distributed among all
students in the class (Lee et al., 1993). Some
students receive no feedback from the teacher while
others may get many feedback statements during a
class period. Yet, when improvement in
performance or achievement are correlated with the
amount of feedback received, the result is that there
is no strong relationship between these variables
(Tan et al., 1993). This means that in physical
education teaching situations, there is no conclusive
evidence indicating that the degree of skill learning
by students depends on the amount of or type of
teacher feedback the students received. These three
different but related pieces of evidence call into
question the view that external feedback is necessary
and beneficial for skill learning. If this view
inappropriately describes the role of external
feedback in skill learning, then the question
becomes, what is the appropriate view of that role?
The following sections will address this question by
showing that rather having one role, external
feedback can actually play four different roles in
skill learning. The role it plays depends largely on
certain characteristics of the skill being learned and
of the person learning the skill (Magill, 1993).
2 DISCUSSIONS
2.1 Four Relationships of External
Feedback to Skill Learning
2.1.1 Necessary for Skill Learning
Although the proposal that the view of external
feedback as necessary and beneficial for skill
learning is not appropriate, there are certain skills for
which external feedback is essential for learning. For
these skills, no learning occurs without external
feedback. This influence of external feedback is
illustrated by the following two examples of
experimental evidence. These examples also
demonstrate the types of skill characteristics that
indicate when learning a skill requires external
feedback. Both examples involve laboratory tasks,
and both follow a similar procedure to demonstrate
the need for external feedback, which is KR in both
cases. This procedure is to withdraw KR after
different amounts of practice. If KR is necessary for
learning these skills, then withdrawing KR too early
in the learning process should lead to not learning
the skill. The second situation involves an important
characteristic of the person learning the skill.
External feedback becomes essential for learning
when the learner lacks prior knowledge about the
relationship between the goal of an action and the
movements required. Examples of this situation
include learning to throw a ball at a particular speed,
or learning to run at a specific pace. In these types of
situations, the critical learner characteristic is not
whether the person is a beginner or is skilled, it is
whether the person has the appropriate prior
knowledge necessary to produce the action that will
lead to the desired goal.
2.1.2 Not Necessary for Skill Learning
There are skills for which the environment or some
non-feedback-related source provides sufficient
The Influence of External Feedback on Skill Learning
467

information to learn the skill. Two examples of
research investigations demonstrating these
situations illustrate how it is possible to learn certain
types of motor skills without external feedback. For
these two investigations, one skill was a laboratory
task, and the other was a real-world skill. The
benefit of considering both types of skills is that
generalizing experimental results to learning sport
skills becomes a less venture some leap and gains
more ecological validity, especially given that some
practitioners and pedagogy researchers have come to
demand relationships between skills used in
experiments and those learned in the "real-world”
before having confidence in such generalizations.
The experimental design was based on one by
Newell (1974) in which KR either was available on
all 75 practice trials or was withdrawn after specific
amounts of practice. The results of all four
experiments were consistent in showing that
regardless of the number of trackway speeds
practiced or the type of test experienced, KR was not
essential for learning the skill. Regardless of when
KR was withdrawn, there were no statistical
differences between KR- withdrawal conditions for
any of the retention or novel transfer tests. Another
experiment that demonstrates that learning a
complex motor skill can occur without the aid of
external feedback was reported by Magill (1993).
These results indicate that the rhythmic gymnastics
rope skill could be learned in the absence of external
feedback if the subjects observed a skilled model
perform the skill. When the model could not be
observed, external feedback was required to
supplement the verbal instructions.
The two research investigations described here
reflect two very different situations, although both
demonstrate learning without the need for external
feedback. In the experiments by Magill et al. (1991),
the task itself provided the feedback needed to learn
the skill, even though subjects picked up that
information in a nonconscious (i.e., implicit)
manner. The evidence from these two studies
indicates that there are indeed situations in which
people can learn skills without the aid of external
feedback. One of these situations occurs when the
skill itself provides sufficient task intrinsic feedback
to enable learning to occur. Another situation occurs
when a demonstration is provided that shows the
learner how the skill is performed correctly. It is
very likely that external feedback will not be needed
to learn skills in situations such as these. What is
common to each situation is that some form of
external referent is available that enables the
performer to determine the correctness of an action.
In the case of learning the rhythmic gymnastics rope
skill, the external referent was not the task itself but
a skilled model performing the skill. The modelled
performance became the reference against which the
learner could compare a practice attempt and then
base corrections to be attempted on the next trial.
2.1.3 Enhancing Skill Learning
There are motor skills that, although they can be
learned without external feedback, can be learned
more quickly or to a higher level of performance if
external feedback is provided. If the full range of
sport skills were assessed, most would likely fall
into this category. Some form of external feedback is
beneficial for learning these skills. Two research
examples, one involving a laboratory task and the
other a sport skill, illustrate the types of skills that.
can be placed into this category. Each of these skills
includes characteristics that make it possible to
establish criteria that indicate when external
feedback should be presented to improve learning.
For the two skills used in these two experiments,
there was sufficient task intrinsic feedback available
to enable the subjects to discover how to improve
their performance during practice. But the
availability of external feedback, especially in a
form that provided information that allowed specific
skill improvement to occur, enabled subjects to
perform beyond that level. And, in the case of the
movement time task in the Stelmach (1970)
experiment, subjects who received external feedback
made this improvement at a faster rate. There appear
to be two messages here. First, there are skills that
can be learned to a certain level without the aid of
external feedback. These skills provide sufficient
task-intrinsic feedback to enable learners to improve
performance. But, there is an upper limit for this
improvement. To achieve a higher level of
performance, external feedback must be provided.
Second, all types of external feedback will not have
the same enhancing effect on skill learning.
2.1.4 Hindering Skill Learning
A frequently forgotten characteristic of external
feedback is that it can hinder skill learning. In some
cases, people would learn the skill better if they had
not received the external feedback, and in other
cases they would learn the skill better if they had
received a different type of or schedule of external
feedback. Here again is an example in which the
type of external feedback becomes a critical
concern. Because there are several different types of
situations in which external feedback can hinder
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learning, three examples of research evidence will
be described here to illustrate this effect. Two
conclusions can be derived from the results from
these three experiments. First, there are forms of
external feedback that can hinder learning. This
situation seems to occur when task-intrinsic
feedback is not readily apparent to the learner. As a
result, the learner develops a dependency on the
external feedback. The problem with this
dependency becomes apparent when the task must
be performed at some later time without the external
information available. Performance suffers greatly in
this situation. Dependency on external feedback can
account for the results in all three experiments. What
becomes especially remarkable about the
development of this dependency is that it occurred
while learning the coincident-anticipation timing
task, even though the task could be learned as
effectively without external feedback as with it. But,
because the use of task-intrinsic feedback was not
consciously evident to subjects, they were easily
misled by erroneous external feedback.
Second, it is possible to encourage learners to
develop a dependency on external feedback by
providing this information too often. Because the
augmented feedback is easier to use, and typically
more meaningful to the learner, the external
feedback becomes the focus of attention, and
important task- intrinsic sensory feedback is ignored.
In effect, learners learn the external feedback rather
than the skill itself.
2.2 Implications for Skill Instruction
The four different relationships between external
feedback and motor skill learning indicate that there
is more to providing external feedback than simply
taking a "some is needed” or a "more is better”
approach. What we know is that there are skills for
which no external feedback is needed because it is
redundant information. Also, there are skills for
which less external feedback is actually better than
more. What is important in an instructional situation,
then, is to determine what external feedback to
provide and when to provide it. The preceding
discussion of the various relationships between
external feedback and skill learning provides some
direction for making these critical determinations.
Three suggestions in order to give external feedback
effectively are presented here.
2.2.1 Evaluate the Skill
It is important in any instructional situation to
evaluate the external feedback needs of the situation
as determined by specific characteristics of the skill
being taught. Insights into evaluating skill
characteristics have been suggested based on those
features of skills that have characterized the various
effects of external feedback on skill learning. At
least four features of skills have been described that
can be related to the need for or type of external
feedback for learning the skill. First, if the skill
being learned does not allow the learner to detect
critical sensory feedback information, such as when
a limb’s spatial position cannot be seen, then
external feedback is required. Second, if the skill
being learned involves acquiring a new concept that
is essential for successful performance, such as
understanding a unit of measurement, then again,
external feedback is required. Third, if the skill
provides the learner with all the essential feedback
information needed to learn the skill, then external
feedback may not be needed. These situations are
indeed rare, but they do occur. Fourth, skills for
which the outcome is easy to determine but the limb
coordination requirements to produce high-level
performance are difficult to develop require
knowledge of performance about limb movement
characteristics. Without. this type of external
feedback, the skill can be learned to a limited
degree; however, the availability of external
feedback based on limb movement characteristics
enhances the level of performance achieved. In these
situations, what becomes critical to facilitate
learning is determining what information to give as
external feedback and how to give it.
2.2.2 Evaluate External Feedback
Characteristics
It is important to evaluate the external feedback that
will be provided in a situation to determine if the
feedback may attract the leamer’s attention to such
an extent that it distracts him or her from essential
task-intrinsic feedback such that the learner becomes
dependent on the external feedback. The instructor
must know how different forms of external feedback
influence learning a particular skill. Skilled teachers
typically use a variety of means to provide external
feedback. Some are verbal, and others are visual.
Some methods require another person to provide the
information, while others include providing external
feedback by means of a videotape replay. Some
teachers also have students do self-evaluations to
The Influence of External Feedback on Skill Learning
469

compare their performance against a checklist of
skill performance characteristics that the teacher has
determined to be critical. The advantage of giving
external feedback less frequently is that the learner
is able to engage in some critical self-evaluation of
his or her performance. This self-evaluation allows
the learner to become more attuned to task-intrinsic
feedback and how that relates to what he or she is
doing (Adams, 1971). One additional point is
important to make here. Providing effective external
feedback clearly requires knowledge of both the skill
and external feedback. The presence of external
feedback attracted attention to such an extent that
incorrect information was not evaluated as incorrect
but was used as the basis for performing the skill.
What this means is that instructors must provide
appropriate information when giving feedback
(Winstein and Schmidt, 1990).
2.2.3 Evaluate the Meaningfulness of
External Feedback
External feedback is a form of communication to the
learner about his or her performance of the skill
being learned (Silverman, 1994). It is therefore
important to take into account what information will
have the most influence on the learner. This
assessment of student needs is critical to facilitate
skill learning. In fact, a recent study by Tan et al.
(1994) provides evidence supporting the importance
of this type of assessment. They showed that
competent teachers with 5 years or more of teaching
experience based their instructional activities on
regular assessments of students' performance. On the
other hand, novice teachers do not show this student-
needs assessment characteristic. Teachers seem to
acquire this characteristic as they gain experience
and become more aware of how to determine
instructional strategies that best facilitate skill
learning. In the experiment by Wallace and Hagler
(1979), verbal encouragement was not as meaningful
as information about the component movements of
the skill. When knowledge of performance about
those movements was provided, learning increased
beyond what resulted when only verbal
encouragement was given. Similarly, in the
experiment by Annett (1959), certain types of
external feedback were more meaningful than other
types. In the case of learning to produce a certain
amount of force with a lever, verbal KR about the
actual amount of force produced was more
meaningful and yielded better learning than seeing a
graphic representation of the amount of force being
produced while the movement was being produced.
Something alluded to earlier but not discussed is
relevant here. The stage of an individual's learning is
also an important learner characteristic for
determining what external feedback is meaningful
(Magill, 1993). In the discussion of the rhythmic
gymnastics rope skill experiment by Magill, the type
of external feedback used was labelled prescriptive
knowledge of performance. The information given
to subjects prescribed what needed to be done to
correct an important performance error. This type of
information is different from what is known as
descriptive knowledge of performance, which
simply describes the error that must be corrected.
For the beginner, this type of information is of little
value. On the other hand, such information can be
very useful for the skilled person (Schmidt, 1989).
The research was carried out in 2016 to 2017. The
data used in this study consisted of primary data and
secondary data, include: number of pipeline orders,
number of coats required for a pipe, number of
coatings required for all pipes, lead time (raw
material ordering time), ordering cost and storage
cost incurred for the project, organizations and
projects structure, data and events from the internet
and journals.
This research uses quantitative approach with
descriptive research type. Especially descriptive
comparative analysis is used to compare three lot
sizing techniques in MRP; Lot for Lot, EOQ, and
POQ. The analysis starts with MRP step which
include: 1) creating a Master Production Schedule,
2) creating a product structure or Bills of Materials,
3) collecting lead time data of raw material ordering,
4) preparing a Gross Requirements Plan, 5) Make a
Net Requirements Plan, 6) determine the ordering
time of goods (Planned Order Release) with lot
sizing method, 7) determine the right lot sizing
method.
Determining the right lot sizing method will
result in a minimum total inventory cost.
Determination of this method is done by comparing
total inventory cost based on company calculation
with total cost obtained through calculation by lot
sizing method. Lot sizing methods used in this
research are Lot for Lot, Economic Order Quantity
(EOQ), and Periodic Order Quantity. The software
for data analysis use Production and Operation
(POM) for Windows ver. 3 (build 18).
3 CONCLUSIONS
A critical feature of the communication between
instructor and student is the appropriateness of
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external feedback. For some situations, it may be
appropriate to give no external feedback at all. For
other situations, for which external feedback is
needed, the critical concern must be to determine
three things: what information to give, how to give
it, and how often to give it. The answers to these
important questions should be based on knowledge
of the skill being learned, the effects different types
of external feedback will have on learning that skill,
and the characteristics of the individuals learning the
skill. One final point is important to make here. If
providing external feedback is an evaluation
component for determining teacher effectiveness,
the frequency of providing feedback should never be
the sole criterion. Although important, frequency is
not one of the most important aspects of determining
the effective use of external feedback. This is
commonly seen in large classes. The frequency of
teacher feedback in these classes is virtually
impossible to control.
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