Adaptation and Retention of Visual-Motor Tracking as a Function of Goal Orientations and Motivational Climate

Individuals who focus on self-referenced improvement and effort exhibit greater intrinsic motivation to participate in sport, physical activity, and movement as well as greater retention of learned motor skills. Additionally, participation in settings prioritizing mastery over performance outcomes is associated with better performance and higher intrinsic motivation. The purpose of the current study was to examine the main and interactive effects of the motivational climate and goal orientations on both linear and nonlinear aspects of motor performance. Participants performed a finger force-matching task with a target line on a computer screen. Results showed that a performance climate was more beneficial for improving mean absolute error during adaptation, whereas motivational climate interacted with task orientation to influence mean absolute error retention. For nonlinear outcomes, higher task and ego orientations were associated with greater sample entropy during adaptation, reflecting exploratory motor behavior. Motivational climate further interacted with goal orientations to affect sample entropy retention, with task-oriented individuals showing increased sample entropy in performance climates. These findings highlight how motivational contexts and individual goal orientations jointly shape motor learning processes, emphasizing their differential effects on linear and nonlinear performance metrics in a controlled laboratory setting