Individual Differences

Question 1

What are individual differences?

Answer 1

People differ in many ways that influence their motor performance and learning
Scientists attempt to identify these individual differences that influence motor performance and learning

Question 2

Why study individual differences?

Answer 2

To understand abilities: More to expertise than just practice. Suggests there are fundamental characteristics that underlie particular skills which are largely inherited and not affected by practice
To make predictions: To predict, based on a set of criteria unique to a person, their likelihood of success or failure in a given situation

Question 3

What is expected when studying individual differences?

Answer 3

1) Stable across many attempts of the same skill
2) Endure across time
3) Difficult to establish from only a single measurement

Question 4

What is the experimental methods?

Answer 4

Experimental method: examining effects of certain variable on motor behavior of people in general. Differences between people are treated as a source of error

Question 5

What is the differential methods?

Answer 5

Examining the differences between and among people on some measure of motor behavior. Rather than noise, these differences are exactly what is studied

Question 6

What is the experimental approach?

Answer 6

subtract out individual differences

Question 7

What is the differential approach?

Answer 7

People who started out higher in one factor tended to end higher in that factor
People who started with a lower score in one factor tend to increase more
Correlation does not equal causation

Question 8

How do you test individual differences using the experimental aproach?

Answer 8

Assumes that humans are all the same
Differences/variations are subtracted/averaged out
Usually compares the means of one test variable between 2 or more subject groups
Leads to cause and effect statements about human behavior

Question 9

How do you test individual differences using the differential approach?

Answer 9

Focuses on factors that make people different
Individual performance on one test compared to performance on another test
Does not infer causation
Uses correlation techniques

Question 10

What is correlation?

Answer 10

A statistic for measuring the strength of relationship between two or more tests
The closer the points are to the line of best fit, the stronger the relationship between the tasks
Relationship is quantified by r
Therefore r can only vary between -1 and +1
Slope of the line (sign) indicates the direction of the relationship
Often uses r^2 when describing correlations

Question 11

What is an ability?

Answer 11

Stable enduring trait underlying skilled behavior, largely unmodified by practice

Question 12

What is a skill?

Answer 12

Capability developed as a result of practice

“ the ability to bring about some end result with maximum certainty and minimum outlay of energy or of time and energy

Question 13

What are characteristics of abilities?

Answer 13

Inherited, genetic, innate
Stable and enduring
Small number (~50)
The hardware or tools
Each underlies many different skills

Question 14

What are characteristics of skills?

Answer 14

Developed with practice
Easily modified by practice
Essentially countless number
The software or what you do with the tools
Each depends on several abilities

Question 15

What is the General Motor Ability?

Answer 15

Some people are successful at performing most sports and some are unsuccessful at almost all sports
A single, inherited motor ability is responsible for all skill performance
Parallels the idea of general mental ability
Federer= Nadal

Question 16

What is the Specificity Hypothesis?

Answer 16

Almost as many abilities as there are skills
There are many specific independent motor abilities that underlie motor performance
Performance on any given task is based on a unique combination of abilities
Abilities needed for one task are different from nearly every other task
Federer not equal to Nadal

Question 17

What grouping of abilities?

Answer 17

Abilities are independent of each other
The total number and the number of abilities important in performance of a task are much fewer in number than in the specificity hypothesis
The performance of different task may share some common underlying abilities
Federer~Nadal

Question 18

What are abilities and the production of skill?

Answer 18

Correlations are too low among different skills to support the theory of General Motor Ability
But some similar skills will correlate strongly suggesting that the specificity hypothesis is not accurate eith
We can use factor analysis to identify some abilities that appear to underlie multiple skills
Develop grouping of abilities

Question 19

What is reaction time?

Answer 19

How fat you can initiate a movement in response to a stimulus

Question 20

What is response orientation?

Answer 20

How quickly you can choose between options in a choice RT task

Question 21

What is speed of movement?

Answer 21

How quickly you can move after RT (or when RT is not a factor)

Question 22

What is finger dexterity?

Answer 22

Fine motor control of fingers and hands

Question 23

What is general dexterity?

Answer 23

Gross motor control of finger and hands

Question 24

What is response integration?

Answer 24

How efficiently you can process multiple streams of incoming sensory data to choose best response

Question 25

What are examples of physical proficiency abilities?

Answer 25

Static strength - exert force against a relatively heavy object
Balance with visual cues - total body balance with visual cues
Gross body coordination- perform a number of complex movements simultaneously

Question 26

What is a superability?

Answer 26

a weak general factor underlying most movement skills

… similar to how IQ is a weak predictor of most cognitive tasks

Question 27

What is the summary of individual differences?

Answer 27

1) Any skill has contributions from only a few abilities
2) abilities don’t contribute equally to a skill
3) different skills will have different proportions of abilities
4) different skills can share some abilities

Question 28

For a given skill, can your future capability be predicted based in your current capability? (worth it)

Answer 28

1) direct practice, growth and development toward natural aptitudes - select the best
2) Tailor practices

Question 29

For a given skill, can your future capability be predicted based on your current capability? (challenging)

Answer 29

1) many things change with growth and development
2) need to know which abilities underlie the skill
3) measuring abilities is very difficult at any level let alone predictive

Question 30

What is the problem with practice?

Answer 30

the pattern of abilities underlying a particular skill changes with practice and experience. someone with the right set of abilities for expert performance but not novice performance may never realize their potential

Question 31

What is the summary of prediction and selection based on abilities?

Answer 31

Prediction based on future skill is difficult because:

1) underlying abilities are not generally known, and hard to measure
2) many abilities may underlie one skill- so even if you can find and measure one ability, many more will be relevant
3) pattern of abilities shifts with practice and can be different between novice and expert