Conditions Of Practice Flashcards
What is the power law of practice (PLP)?
The most important variable in motor learning
Performance curves usually a negatively accelerated functions : i.e. The rate of improvement tends to zero with practice
What is the equation for PLP?
T = aP^-b
Where T is time.
A and b are constants, P is a measure of the amount of practice
The larger the ‘b’ is, the more rapid are the decreases with practice
What is the evidence for the generality of PLP?
Fittz(1964), Newell and Rosenbloom (1981) : performance curves follow a PLP
Crossman (1959) cigar rolling still improvement after 10 million cigars rolled.
The rate of improvement at any point in practice tends to be linearly related to the margin of improvement left
Discuss pre-practice motivation for learning.
With goal setting, ‘do your best’ goals are worse than specific, absolute goals of moderate difficulty (Kyllo and Landers, 1995)
Describe pre-practice modelling?
Watch movement executed by somebody and copy the model
Movement strategies can be learned by observation (Martens et al,1976)
Also spatial and temporal information is learned
Discuss expert vs learning models?
Delayed retention and delayed transfer highest (absolute error lowest) when learning model existed with KR.
No KR is essentially useless
Sometimes learning models are better than expert, sometimes the inverse applies.
What did Deakin and Proteau (2000) state about scheduling observations?
Intersperse the demonstration with physical practice
What do Bourne and Archer (1956) suggest about the distribution of practice (DoP)?
Found that the longer the rest, the better the performance
Also, given constant periods of work, short rest periods degrade performance relative to longer rest periods
What are the effects of learning on DoP?
Practice distribution has large effects on temporary performance levels and relatively permanent influences on learning
How does total practice time influence effects of learning?
In experiments, the number of practice trials is held constant, but duration is varied; massed practice is shorter than distributed.
Massed practice leads to reduced benefits per time in training but requires the least total time
What did Schmidts (1975) schema theory suggest about variability of practice??
The transfer to novel tasks was enhanced after practice in variable conditions
What are the VoP effects on retention??
Shea and Kohl (1990,1991) found retention was best (lowest error) when variable tasks were added to the criterion
What did McCracken and Stelmach (1977) find when looking at VoP effects in transfer?
They found better transfer for task within range of practice distances.
For the distance outside the range practiced, Catalano and Kleiner (1984) found a smaller error for the variable error. VoP appears to increase the applicability of the learning
What are some other factors influencing effects of the variability of practice?
Age of the learner - powerful for children
Gender of the learner - more effective for females
Scheduling variable practice - Lee et al (1995) found variable practice was most effective randomised rather than blocked
What is the difference between blocked vs random practice??
Blocked practice : sequence where all the trials on one task are done together , uninterrupted by other activities
Random practice : same task is never repeated on consecutive trials
The results show better performance during practice in blocked condition but the reverse in retention. Hence always better to practice under random conditions
