the effect of time of training and night sleep on enhancement of "accuracy" and "timing" components of fine motor skill

the purpose of this study was the effect of time of training and first night of sleep on implicit (accuracy) and motor (timing) components of timed motor sequences task (tmst) enhancement. forty-eight right-handed students (19-25 years old), who have had adequate sleep quality, were divided into three equal groups according to purdue hand and fingers' fine motor skills test and simple reaction rime test. the subjects under three different practice conditions (time between the first practice session to night sleep differed) participated in tmst practice at the first day and were retested at the second day. to evaluate the enhancement of accuracy and timing components, the last 10 trials of the first day and the first 10 trials of the second day were compared. data were analyzed using paired sample t test, effect size and one way analysis of variance for independent measures and a tukey's post-hoc test in α=0.05 level of significance. results showed that first night of sleep after a session of practice enhanced the timing of long and short elements of tmst (p0.05). in addition, the condition wherein the night sleep was done immediately after the first session, had the most effect (38%) on enhancement of timing of the long and short elements in tmst. therefore, night sleep effects on the timing component of fine skill motors compared with accuracy component and its effectiveness is subject to the time between the first training session and night sleep.