Chapter 5 Flashcards
Helps us understand phenomena and explains the reasons why these phenomena exist or behave as they do. They are developed to help us understand various aspects of the physical universe and do so by providing us with explanations of observable physical events.
Theory
- Must accurately describe a large class of observations 2. Must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.
Requirements of a Theory
Theory of Motor Control
Understanding and explain motor skill performance (constraints, limits, potential, deficits, etc.) enables the practitioner to: 1. Identify performance problems; 2. Develop intervention strategies to help overcome performance problems; 3. Predict effectiveness of intervention strategies; 4. Develop a systematic approach to help a person increase skill performance capabilities; 5. Create new intervention strategies; and 6. Evaluate effectiveness of intervention strategies (See p. 88 for graphic)
Proposing laws and principles that govern coordinated human motor behavior. Focuses on explaining observed behavior w/o specifying neural-level features.
Behavioral-level motor control theories
Describes neural mechanism interactions that explain how the nervous system is involved in behavioral principles.
Neural-level motor control theories
The patterning of head, body, and/or limb motions relative to the patterning of environmental objects and events
*Coordination
The number of independent elements or components in a control system and the number of ways each component can vary
*Degrees of Freedom
A control problem that occurs in the designing of a complex system that must produce a specific result; the design problem involves determining how to constrain the system’s many degrees of freedom so that it can produce the specific result
*Degrees of Freedom Problem
A control system in which all the information needed to initiate and carry out an action as planned is contained in the initial instructions to the effectors
*Open-loop Control System
A control system in which, during the course of an action, feedback is compared against a standard or reference to enable an action to be carried out as planned
*Closed-loop Control system
The control center of a control system whose role is to generate and issue movement instructions.
Executive
The muscles of the limbs, body, and/or head involved in producing a desired movement
Effectors
Information from the sensory system that indicates the status of a movement to the central nervous system; in a closed-loop control system, feedback is used to make corrections to an ongoing movement.
*Feedback
A memory representation that stores information needed to perform an action
*Motor Program
The memory representation of a class of actions that share common invariant characteristics; it provides the basis for controlling a specific action within the class of actions
*Schmidt’s Generalized Motor Program (GMP)
A set of different actions having a common but unique set of features
Class of Actions
A unique set of characteristics that defines a GMP and does not vary from one performance of the action to another. The “signature” of a GMP that forms the basis for what is stored in memory
*Invariant Features
Features of the GMP that can be varied from one performance of a skill to another; the features of a skill that must be added to the invariant features of a GMP before a person can perform a skill to meet the specific demands of a situation.
*Parameters
The proportion, or percentage, of the total amount of time required by each component of a skill during the performance of that skill
*Relative Time
A formalized theory of how the GMP operates to control coordinated movement
Schmidt’s Schema Theory
A rule or set of rules that serves to provide the basis for a decision; in Schmidt’s schema theory, an abstract representation of rules governing movement
*Schema
Responsible for providing the specific rules governing the performance of a skill in a given situation
Motor Response Schema
An approach to describing and explaining the control of coordinated movement that emphasizes the role of information in the environment and the dynamic properties of the body and limbs; it is also known as the dynamic pattern theory
*Dynamical Systems Theory
A behavior that changes in abrupt, nonlinear ways in response to systematic linear increases in the value of a specific variable
Nonlinear Behavior
A behavioral steady state of a system that represents a preferred behavioral state and incorporates the notion of invariance by noting that a stable system will spontaneously return to a stable state after it is slightly perturbed
*Stability
The stable behavioral steady states of systems. In terms of human movement, they characterize preferred behavioral states.
*Attractors
Functionally specific variables that define the overall behavior of a system; they enable a coordinated pattern of movement to be reproduced and distinguished from other patterns; known also as collective variables
*Order Parameters
A quantified value that represents the movement relationship between two movement segments
Relative Phase
Coordinated movement control variables that freely change according to the characteristics of an action situation. Under certain conditions, they can shift a system’s behavior from one coordination pattern to another coordination pattern.
*Control Parameters
The emergence of a specific stable pattern of behavior due to certain conditions characterizing a situation rather than to a specific control mechanism organizing the behavior
*Self-organization
Functionally specific collections of muscles and joints that are constrained by the nervous system to act cooperatively to produce an action; sometimes referred to as muscle or motor synergies
*Coordinative Structures
The spatial and temporal coordination of vision and the hands or feet that enables people to perform eye-hand and eye-foot coordination skills; that is, the coordination of the visual perception of the object and the limb movement required to achieve the action goal
*Perception-action Coupling
The reciprocal fit between the characteristics of a person and the characteristics of the environment that permit a specific action to occur, such as stairs having the physical characteristics to permit stair climbing
*Affordance
