Describe deliberate practise
- Deliberate Practice : “activities that have been specifically designed to improve the current level of performance” Ericsson et al.
Explain the power law of practise
- Power law relates the time of practise to the time it takes you to carry out the task
- Rate of improvement is related to the amount left to learn
START = High amount left to learn - high rate of improvement
Near END = Low amount left to learn - takes a lot longer to require the skill
- Rate of improvement is related to the amount left to learn
- Practise increases performance(neg accelerating)
- Practise reduces the number of errors made
Define expertise
- With sport there is talent & physical attributes which is incorporated into becoming a professional
- The more practise the more learning we expect to see
Describe the rule of 10 (Balyi, Ross and Way, 2005)
10 years
* 10, 000 hours
- By 16 yrs. of age full-time academy football players have practised:
* 12/15hrs per week
* 700hrs per year
* Average 7000 hrs total
- New academy structure, pioneered by Watford FC, looks to dramatically increase these figures. (increase the opportunity to practise more)
- 10,000 hours could create expertise in an intricate skill, but not applicable to sport
What are the types of practise organisation?
- Part vs Whole
- Massed vs Distributed
- Constant vs Variable
- Blocked vs Random
Describe part vs whole practise organisation
Part:
- skill broken into parts
- useful for serial skill where parts occur sequentially e.g.: tennis serve
- Difficult if there is interdependence of parts
Whole:
- Skill practised as a whole
- effective for rapid skills, where part practise prevents learning e.g.: summersault
- effective when parts have high interaction with each other
- In difficult tasks part practise gives the player an idea and picture of the movement
- People progress at different rates, we are looking for the practise with the most retention
Explain massed and distributed practise
- Massed practise - work periods outweigh rest periods
- Distributed practise – rest outweighs work(usually more effective for performance & learning)
Name the person who studies type writer skills and what conclusions were made
Baddely and Longman (1978)
showed that:
- Learning occurring mental processing & consolidating between practise time
- Massed practise does not work as well as distributed practise for retention and ability to perform the task
- Distributed achieved the number of strokes the fastest, but did not like their training compared to the bottom group
- Distributed allows for mental processing and consolidating in between sessions
Who did the study on massed vs distributed practise on Javelin with non-dominant arm?
Describe which was more effective
Murphy (1916) – Javelin with non-dominant arm
* 34 practice sessions
* Group 1: Mon, Tue, Wed, Thurs, Fri
* Group 2: 3 times per week
* Group 2 performed better & 3 months later
–> Group 2 performed better after all 34 practise sessions & better retention after time
Who did the study on massed vs distributed practise on Golf putting with novices?
Dail & Christina (2004) – Golf putting (novices)
240 practice attempts
* Group 1: One day (rest 10 mins / 10 putts)
* Group 2: Four days (60 putts per day)
* Group 2 performance better after :
* 240 trials
* 1 day
* 7 days
–> Group 2 performed & had higher retention overall
What are some possible reasons that distributed practise is more effective than massed practise?
- Fatigue issues in massed
- Reduced cognitive effort in massed
- Better memory consolidation with distributed (when there are rest periods)
- Most learning appeared to be learnt in the distributed group - most rest
- Fatigue affected all groups, but most distributed group still performed the best
Define constant and varied practise
Which is better for motor learning?
- Constant – Repeated 10 m passes
- Varied – Passes of different angles, distances, & speeds
varied practise as it links with schema theory that different parameters allow for better consolidation of movement
What is contextual interference?
What type of practise does this occur in?
- Contextual interference (CI) occurs when a series of different skills are practised within one session.
- selecting a different action every trial (random), forcing the learner to perform additional cognitive operations which results in more meaningful storage of information in memory’ (Williams, 1998)
- Occurs in Random Practise
Blocked practise is = simple repetitions of the same skill
–> Sometimes a blocked skill must be practised to get an idea/image of a skill, before randomising practise- Introduce CI gradually after a period of blocked practise with novices
- In High CI learner never practises the same skill twice
- Lee & Magill (1983) – Blocked group performed better in practice
- Random group performed better in retention
What are the considerations of contextual interference?
- Learner needs an ‘image of skill’ first
- Best suited for late cognitive/early associative stage
- CI(contextual interference) is increased as learning progresses
Describe discovery learning
Hands-off approach’ - Finding movement pattern to solve own movement problems.
* Guided discovery encourage
- adaptability
- flexibility
- Persistence
What are the differences between traditional learning and discovery learning?
Traditional:
- demo of perfect model (performance)
- regular demos
- demos most effective early in learning
Discovery:
- demo of model for beneficial problem solving
- infrequent demos to prevent dependency
- no demos in early learning as they discourage discovery learning
What are some potential issues with discovery learning?
Why is discovery learning not applicable to all sports?
- Encourage reliance on intrinsic rather than augmented feedback
- Process of “fading out” feedback
– Performance bandwidths
– Timing - Performance may decrease initially
– resist temptation to instruct even if player needs help to begin with - Depends on the sport, e.g.: cannot be done in gymnastics as an idea of the skill is needed to progress(too technical)
