Effect of Practice Arrangement on Mental Representation of Basketball Free Throw

This study was aimed to compare the effect of practice with high, low, and increasing interference on accuracy and mental representation of basketball free throw. For this purpose, 30 novice participants were randomly divided into random, blocked, and increasing groups. The participants practiced the basketball free throw from different distances (3/96, 4/57, and 5.18 meter) for three consecutive days-three blocks each day and each block included 30 trials- according to the given grouping and practice order. Three days after the last training session retention and transfer tests were performed. Results showed that the increasing group had higher accuracy than the other two groups. The results during the transfer test were similar to the retention test. The results for the mental representation measure showed that the increasing group had a more structured mental representation that two other groups and this mental representation were more similar to the mental representation of the skilled participants. These results were interpreted according to the efficient processing of the information and also according to the challenge point framework