Lecture 11

Question 1

through practice we ….

Answer 1

1. Learn new skills
2. Build motor programs
3. Progress our skills
4. Acclimate to possible and specific situations

Question 2

how do we define practice?

Answer 2

• principals of practice
  1. More practice= more learning
  2. Time is a factor- but not the only factor
  3. Practice methods are important- all are not equal

Question 3

practice

Answer 3

• involves repetition (not the same thing as practice)

- more effective practice occurs when we involved the processing loops

Question 4

specificity of practice

Answer 4

• what are learn, depends largely on what you practice
• environment: “home field advantage”
• sensory feedback-incorporating sensory information into practice: using the same lighting, sounds, ect
• this is used for novice and expert

Question 5

learning vs performance (in practice)

Answer 5

• always do your best in practice-conflicting information
• two activities to try-practice sessions and test sessions
  1. Practice sessions- avoid doing what you did previously
• try different ways to control your movement
• instruction
  2. Test sessions- to measure the effectiveness of learning progress
• the next 5 attempts are a test
• perform as best as possible

Question 6

benefits of practice

Answer 6

1. Perceptual skills
   - we learn to detect visual info, which fosters our ability to predict what is going to happen
   - experts: narrow focus: learn what to attend
   - novice: take in the whole environment
2. Attention
   - reduced attentional capacity demands
   - attentional needs are decreased by tasks that are well learned (we are skilled at)
   - with practice we are able to minimize attention
3. Reduced effector competition
   - practice moves us closer to 1 motor program (tap head, rub tummy)
   - “gearshift analogy”
   - different stages of learning (Fitts and Posner)
4. Error detection capability
   - novice vs expert
   - novice needs to pay attention: ex) place someone in dance position so they can feel it
   - expert: becomes very efficient

Question 7

stages of learning

Answer 7

• two sets of stages have been proposed: Bernstein and Fitts: 2 different perspectives of motor learning
  1. Fitt’s stages
• cognitive stage-associative-autonomous
  2. Bernstein stages
• reduce D of F-release D of F exploit dynamics

Question 8

fitts stages of learning

Answer 8

1. Cognitive: verbal and cognitive ability dominates
   - concerned with goal ID, performance evaluation, what to do/when to do it, how to do it, ect
   - environment- what to feel/see/hear- generate a response
   - instructional goal- transfer known skills into the new skill
2. Fixation (associative) - focus on organization movement patterns
   - closed skills become more stereotypic
   - open skills- more adaptable to a changing environment
3. Autonomous- perceptual anticipation is high
   - longer movement sequences are now programmed-decrease attentional needs
   - error detection and correction capabilities are high

Question 9

Bernstein’s stages of learning

Answer 9

• the degrees of freedom problem: the more joints, muscles, ect are involved in movement the higher the degrees of freedom
  1. Reduce degrees of freedom- freezing the degrees of freedom
• fosters a shift of our attention to the basics of the movement
  2. Releasing degrees of freedom- as skill progresses (control increases), we increase the degrees of freedom
• capable of the next challenge, the next step
  3. Exploit passive dynamics of the body
• learn how to exploit the passive dynamics of the body- energy and motion (gravity, spring like quality of muscle, momentum)
• movements increase in effectiveness and with efficiency= minimum output of energy

Question 10

absence of practice

Answer 10

• forgetting may occur
• discrete tasks- forgotten more easily
• continuous tasks- retained well over long periods of no practice (months, years)

Question 11

transfer and similarity

Answer 11

• transfer between skills depends on the skills’ movement or perceptual similarity
• the concept of similarity among skills involves several classes of common features:
  a) common movement patterning: throwing different balls with different goals
  b) common perceptual elements: interceptions soccer vs baseball
  c) common strategic or conceptual elements: driving in NA vs Europe: how to work the car is same
• transfer is greater when learning a new skills
• supplementary drills? Less effective to take skills out of a overall skill and work on them for a long time

Question 12

part practice to whole practice

Answer 12

• learning a long sequence of movements; cannot be taught in one practice session
  a) Part practice- breaking down the sequence in to the individual components (that can stand on their own)
• in a movement sequence are the movements/skills all separate
  b) whole practice- is also then important
• involved the interaction between each of the skills
  c) progressive part practice- 3 skills together, then add another, then another

Question 13

principles of part practice

Answer 13

1. Efficient for very slow, serial tasks with no component interaction; the difficult elements
2. For very brief, programmed actions, part practice is seldom useful and can be detrimental to learning
3. The more the components of a task interact with each other, the less the effectiveness of part practice

Question 14

simulation and transfer

Answer 14

• a simulator is a practice device designed to mimic features of a real-world task
• are often very elaborate, sophisticated and expensive
• can be important part of an instructional program:
  a) the skill is expensive or dangerous
  b) where facilities are limited
  c) where real practice is not feasible

Question 15

physical vs psychological fidelity

Answer 15

• fidelity is the degree to which the simulator mimics the criterion task
  1. Physical fidelity: is the degree to which the surface features of a simulation and the criterion task are identical
  2. Psychological fidelity: is the degree to which the behaviors produced in a simulator are identical to the behaviors required by the criterion task