Nursing, as a practice profession, demands competency in numerous psychomotor skills related to patient care. Educators have the responsibility for providing experiences that will prepare students for their future roles. Using theory from Paivio, Anderson, and Bandura to form the supportive framework, this attribute-treatment study explored the interactive effects of imagery skills and various combinations of physical and mental practice on learning a psychomotor skill.

Nursing students from seven universities were assessed for levels of imagery vividness and control. Through randomization, they were assigned to a physical practice only, a mental rehearsal only, or a combined mental rehearsal plus physical practice group. After learning to apply and remove sterile gloves, subjects were evaluated on their performance of the skill.

It was predicted that subjects possessing high imagery abilities would perform the criterion skill better than other subjects. It was also predicted that subjects would benefit more from the mental rehearsal plus physical practice condition than subjects in the other conditions. It was further hypothesized that there would be a significant interaction between imagery vividness and imagery control with the effect of high imagery control being more pronounced for subjects with high imagery vividness when learning the criterion skill. Two-way interactions were predicted such that subjects with high imagery abilities in the mental rehearsal plus physical practice condition would perform better than other subjects. The predicted three-way interaction stated that learning of the criterion skill would be most pronounced for subjects high on imagery vividness and high on imagery control in the mental rehearsal plus physical practice condition and in the mental rehearsal only condition.

A 3-Factor ANOVA was performed and a significant main effect for practice condition was obtained (p $<$.05). Subjects in the mental rehearsal plus physical practice condition performed significantly better than subjects in the mental rehearsal only condition but not the physical practice only condition. No other hypotheses were supported. These findings have important implications for educators who teach nursing skills. Incorporating the use of mental rehearsal as an adjunct to physical practice in an effort to facilitate skill acquisition was found to be beneficial.