Warm-up in massed and distributed pursuit rotor performance.

Abstract

Warm-up decrement was studied in the performance of a massed and a well-distributed practice group in an epicyclic pursuit rotor task. Warm-up was measured by the extent of the sharp initial rise in the postrest performance (initial increase method) or by the difference between the performance level on the last prerest trial and on the first postrest trial (decrement method). The initial increase method indicated that warm-up under distributed practice conditions increased to a max. and then decreased as a function of the number of practice sessions. The decrement method indicated only a reliable increase in the amount of warm-up as the number of practice sessions increased. No reliable trend for warm-up was obtained for the massed practice group.