Lecture 18: Skill Acquisition

Question 1

Procedural Information

Answer 1

Knowing how to do something

Question 2

Declarative Information

Answer 2

Knowing that you should do something

Question 3

Skill Learning Stages

Answer 3

Cognitive, associative, autonomous/automatic

Question 4

Cognitive Stage

Answer 4

○ Declarative knowledge
○ Commits facts to memory
○ Rehearse as you try to perform
○ Requires attention; can’t do a second task
○ May be independent of skill: the best teacher may not be the most skillful, but rather someone who knows how to describe the cognitive stage well

Question 5

Associative Stage

Answer 5

• Strengthen connections that lead to desired results
  
  • Feedback is important; see with actions lead to desired result
  • Get rid of actions that lead to errors

Question 6

Autonomous/Automatic Stage

Answer 6

fast, less attention, less verbalization, feedback less important, need for consistent practice. Allows you to execute the skill quickly. Procedural
* Declarative knowledge is less available
* Feedback is less important and lower level
○ Proprioceptive feedback rather than visual is important
* Need for consistent practice

Question 7

How to get from declarative to procedural

Answer 7

• Procedural are automatic if-then things between conditions and actions
• Declarative is in a separate memory, and is converted by compiling this knowledge through proceduralization and composition

Question 8

Proceduralization

Answer 8

Taking one piece of declarative knowledge and turning it into procedural

Question 9

Composition

Answer 9

Taking many production rules and composing them into one

Question 9

Procedural Knowledge

Answer 9

○ Separate from declarative
○ Made of production rules; if-then statements

Question 10

Declarative Memory

Answer 10

Where we store explicit knowledge

Question 11

Response Chaining

Answer 11

Feedback from one movement triggers the next one
○ Originally a behaviorist notion
○ It is incorrect because movements occur too quickly

Question 12

Motor Program

Answer 12

○ Representation of the plan for movement and movement sequences
§ Fast but doesn’t require feedback
§ Abstract
□ Abstract programs

		§ Hierarchical 
			□ Abstract high level
			□ Specific low level
		§ Composed of subprograms
			□ Less abstract representations of movement sub-parts

Question 13

Rosenbaum Finger-Tapping experiment

Answer 13

○ Asked people to tap their fingers in a specific sequence, and measured how long between each tap
○ It could be easily explained through a hierarchy, and the time between steps represented how many hierarchies had to be passed to get to the final motion
§ Often a pause between switching from index to middle fingers because you have to go up and back down the hierarchy

Question 14

Proprioception

Answer 14

Knowing where your body is in relation to the space around you

Question 15

Parkinson’s disease

Answer 15

• People with Parkinson’s disease has basal ganglia issue and cannot send dopamine and have impaired motor control
  
  • Frontal and premotor area are for learning and motor skills
  • Primary motor sends the signals to your muscles

Question 16

Fitt’s Law

Answer 16

You are faster to hit a target if it is big and close to you vs small and far
* There’s a formula for this

Question 16

Population Codes

Answer 16

Certain neurons like pointing in certain directions, and so you can decode direction of through this