Final Exam

Question 1

Fitts’ Stages of Learning are designed to consider…

Answer 1

Perceptual-motor learning
Motor performance changes as a function of practice

Question 2

Fitts’ 3 stages of learning

Answer 2

1) Cognitive Stage (what do I do, break it down)
2) Fixation Stage (what else is going on)
3) Autonomous Stage (integration and expertise)

Question 3

Cognitive Stage

Answer 3

Verbalize the skill, figuring things out with instructions, transferring skills, effective strategies are discovered
Significant gains made quickly, yet still not smooth or confident
Demands concentration which interferes with processing other sensory events

Question 4

Fixation Stage

Answer 4

a.k.a associative/motor stage
Cognitive problems and technicalities have been solved, not moving on to the most efficient and effective way to execute action, “building” the motor program
Performance improves steadily, inconsistency between trials (trying to find the best method) decreases, less self-talk, develop error detection
Much longer than cognitive stage

Question 5

Autonomous Stage

Answer 5

After lots of practice, expert performance, high perceptual anticipation, less programs organized and initiated, less demand on attention
an simultaneously perform higher-order cognition (ex. strategy), self-talk almost absent, higher confidence, fine-tuned error detection
Performance improvements are slow (because they are an expert), but motor learning is still occurring

Question 6

Bryan and Harter

Answer 6

Studied morse code learning
Skill of receiving morse code became more efficient with practice both quantitatively (speed of letter detection) and qualitatively (identifying letters, groupings of letters, words, common phrases, etc.)
Found consistency in movement timing continued to improve
Perceptual and motor skills never stopped improving, performance became more efficient and less variable (more reliable)

Question 7

Crossman

Answer 7

Studied cigar rolling
Found that improvements plateaued after 7 years of practice, but not because of a limitation in human performance. The plateau was because of the machine’s limit in cycle time
Presumably, cigar rollers’ time would’ve improved if the machines could go faster

Question 8

Why is the idea that learning ends an illusion?

Answer 8

Because those results are almost always caused by a limitation of sensitivity of the equipment.

Question 9

Berntein’s Stages perspective is from…

Answer 9

A biomechanics and combined motor control perspective

Question 10

Bernstein’s Stages

Answer 10

Stage 1) Reduce degrees of freedom (bare-bones skills)
Stage 2) Release degrees of freedom (whole body integrated in skills)
Stage 3) Exploit passive dynamics (let the body do it’s thing to do skills)

Question 11

What is a degree of freedom?

Answer 11

A possibility of how many muscles and joints are free to use (to perform something)

Question 12

Stage 1) Reduce degrees of freedom

Answer 12

Reduce nonessential/redundant body parts (freezing these degrees of freedom) in early stages of learning
The idea is to maximize control and attention on rudimentary parts of the action

Question 13

Stage 2) Release degrees of freedom

Answer 13

When stage 1 (minimum degrees of freedom) starts to succeed, release some degrees of freedom that help in speed and/or greater force production

Question 14

Stage 3) Exploit passive dynamics

Answer 14

Movement becomes maximally skilled in effectiveness and efficiency
Take advantage of passive forces (momentum, gravity, spring-like behaviour of muscles, etc. energy and motion that come “for free”)

Question 15

Studies that suggest learning never stops

Answer 15

Bryan and Harter’s Morse Code study
Crossman’s Cigar Rolling study

Question 16

Limitations of Fitts’ and Bernstein’s models

Answer 16

• Some movements never release degrees of freedom (some tasks require lots of concentration and will stay at the freezing stage, never releasing)
• Some tasks never become autonomous
• Fitts’ stages aren’t unidirectional, they can regress in situations of high arousal and/or long periods of misuse (no recent practice)

Question 17

Forgetting skills (Discrete skill)

Answer 17

Longer retention intervals produce more forgetting
No universal/general guidelines on how long it takes to forget a skill
Depends on quality and intervals of practice, and the skill itself
Studies show that performance may be poorer in initial retention trials, it was easier to retrieve that motor program after a short amount of time
Many different ways to graph performance skills
Not talking about errorsMore cognitive tasks are forgotten quickly, but are developed and gained relatively quickly
More cognitive tasks are forgotten quickly, but are developed and gained relatively quickly

Question 18

Forgetting skills (Continuous skill)

Answer 18

Almost no forgetting even after a year
But still depends on time interval and quality of practice

Question 19

Warm-up decrement

Answer 19

Skills where warming-up a skill is required before achieving optimal performance
NOT physiological warm-up, we’re talking about psychological warm-up
- Varies between skills
- After 20 mins of not performing a discrete skill, we forget a lot of it
- Decrement decreases when practice interval increases (more practice = less decrement)
- Brought on by passage of time
- You get reacquainted with skills

Question 20

Forgetting is not a loss of memory, we lose the…

Answer 20

SET (use it or lose it principle)
set = various psychological processes to execute the skill optimally
- Discrete skills: we can still do a free throw after not doing it for a while, but it just won’t be as good (loss a few SET properties of the action),
ex. Some pro athletes try free throws without a ball before actual free throws (not improving physical performance or biomechanics, but re-familiarizing psyche with action)

Question 21

Skill transfer

Answer 21

Types and amounts of specificity for transfer and retention
- Important for fixation, but variable for transfer
- Whether or not transfer is possible
- Types of transfer

Question 22

Similarity

Answer 22

The more similar two skills are, the more transfer will occur
- NOT actually as simple as this irl though (because similarity is pretty broad and hard to put parameters on)
Ex. is throwing a baseball more similar to throwing a javelin or a football? We don’t know

Question 23

Similarity - Fundamental movement patterns

Answer 23

Movement classes and degrees of freedom are important here
Ex. throws that require similar degrees of freedom and force generation are more transferrable
The more overlap of instruction, the less learning required, thus more transfer can happen

Question 24

Similarity - Perceptual elements

Answer 24

When 2 skills share similar info processing demands, transfer is likely higher
- Anticipation and feedback strategies are the same, then it can be improved and transferred

Question 25

Similarity - Strategic and conceptual similarities

Answer 25

When tasks have similar rules of engagement and play, guidelines, strategies/concepts, transfer is facilitated

Question 26

Transfer as a learning progresses

Answer 26

More practice of a specific skill, we get more efficient and specific in executing the skills, so generalization of the skill is harder
You are only an expert at performing the skill in a specific context
Transfer of a skill is best in the beginning stages of learning
Motor transfer is small even if tasks are similar (ex. throwing a football will only help so much when trying to throw a basketball - deliberate practice as in Ericsson model)
So not very effective at getting better at variety of specific skills
AND no transfer of basic abilities (those are innate, and can’t be trained), only skills

Question 27

Skill development or ability development?

Answer 27

SKILL DEVELOPMENT - You can’t develop abilities

Question 28

Part practice

Answer 28

Procedure where a complex skill is broken down into parts that are practiced separately
Good for: Serial skills of long duration (e.g. dance routine) when errors of one part don’t really impact performance of the next part (part-to-part interaction is low)
Bad for: Skills where part-to-part interaction is high

Question 29

Whole practice

Answer 29

Practice of a complex skill in its entirety without breaking it into parts
Good for: Skills where part-to-part interaction is high

Question 30

Why is duration a primary determinant of something is good for whole or part practice?

Answer 30

Discrete tasks are quick and don’t need to be broken down
Continuous tasks are usually longer and slower, so they can be broken down

Question 31

Progressive part practice

Answer 31

Parts of a skill are gradually integrated into larger units during practice
We improve form and remove bad performance habits this way
Ex. practicing follow-through of a golf swing a few times (as a drill) and then practice a full golf swing, also employing the follow-through (you see what you’re doing right and wrong in the big, practical picture)

Question 32

Simulation and transfer

Answer 32

Important when:
Skill is expensive or dangerous (ex. NASCAR)
Facilities are limited (ex. golf in winter, indoor golf simulators)
Limitations of resources (ex. injury)
More practice trials in less time, more transfer

Question 33

Fidelity

Answer 33

How well a simulator mimics the real world
Physical = need to be identical to sensory and physical features of real world demands
Psychological = behaviours and processes produced need to replicate the target task (determines how well we go through conceptual model of info processing) (set needs to be similar to real-life task) to optimize learning transfer
- Type of task may favour physical or psychological fidelity (ex. real body won’t respond the same way as a CPR mannequin, and it won’t be a nice quiet room in a real-life scenario)