Lecture 3.2 Skill Acquisition Flashcards
T or F: Practice provides a perceptual adavantage and it is specific to the nature of the skill practiced
True
If you are an experienced driver, will you have to start the learning process all over again if you take a year off driving or drive in England for the first time?
No, because learning is permanent and requires retention and transfer, we have GMP’s, and near transfer can occur.
Yes adaptation will take time, performance will be slow initially, but experts are able to self-modifiy their own behaviours or skills to match the new environmental demands.
What is the most important aspect of skill acquisition?
Practice
Principles of Practice
What are the pros and cons of repetition in practice?
Pros
- Repetition allows us to explore the best movement options to achieve the target goal.
- Allows you to perfect the movement or skill with each repetitive trial
- It is necessary for practice but not the only required principle
Cons
- Repeating the same skill in the same environment does not allow for skill transfer
*Repitition needs to be deliberate
Thought to be the best aspect of practice (Ericcson’s 10k hour rule)
Principles of Practice
What are the pros and cons of specificity in practice?
Pros
- If you want your team to do well on a cold, dark, rainy night in stoke, you need to specifically practice in that environment so the skill transfer can happen i.e. Canada losing 2-1 to Honduras because of the rain puddles - did not transfer prepare - Canadian players could not pick up the sensory information of the ball suddenly stopping like the Hondurans who have likely played in these types of conditions their whole life
Cons
- Too specific practice will not allow for proper skill transfer when the environment changes
- Affects both closed and open skills
T or F: Repetition is the dominant principle of practice
False, specificity is the dominant principle of practice
T or F: A new environment with new sensory feedback can hinder/reduce performance no matter how much practice with that specific skill
True
What is the ideal practice setup to reduce too much specificity?
During practice, the goal should be a mixture of play and test sessions.
Play session:
- Let them freely find their own way to achieve the goal. i.e. unrestricted scrimmage
- Can’t use the same method each trial
- This will lead to self-discovery of a method that works for them to achieve the goal
- There is no evaluation at this stage to reduce arousal levels and pressure
- Not given the optimal method of achieving the goal just yet, this will allow them to use different methods each trial to find what works for them
- Another example: prof leaves out some notes on the slide, you have to work harder and struggle with the material more, and the better you will do in any form of learning
Test session:
- Perform the optimal target skill as effectively as possible
- Use the movement they feel is best to achieve the goal (i.e. in five or ten trials)
- Self-evaluation to assess their own progress and aid in finding the best movement pattern
What are some alternatives to a repetition practice design (i.e. hitting the same shot at a golf driving range)?
- Use the play method to allow for self-discovery of their optimal shot form
- Perform each shot with a specific goal: distance goal, placement goal
- Best alternative: go to an actual golf course where you can mimic all kinds of shots in different environments, best to do it at the course you will be competing in
What is the practice design and what are alternatives to it?
Practice design: emphasis is on improving performance during practice (i.e. hit longer or more accurately on the range)
- Cons = only focuses on optimizing performance during practice and does not allow for play sessions where participants can explore different and better methods for them
Alternatives:
Don’t emphasize performance (as much) and emphasize more play (reduce the arousal)
What is the specificity design and what are alternatives to it?
Specificity design: practice is way too specific (i.e. flat ground, raised ball, no obstacles to ball flight, sheltered environment)
Alternatives
- Play on the course that they will be competing on
- Can still practice specificity, but do it in multiple environments and scenarios, not just on a driving range or the most perfectly cut field
Exception for pro footballers because they always play on the best fields with the best cut grass during their season. However, as we saw with Canada vs Honduras, their specific training was not able to transfer to the rain puddles and weather in Honduras. The Hondurans were able to adapt much more quickly because they played in these conditions their entire lives.
What are the benefits of practice?
Perceptual skills
- Enhanced perceptual processing/perceptions, i.e. pro hockey players see the game much slower than fans
- i.e. Chess Recall Experiment (Chase & Simon, 1973): Experts were able to recall the game-realistic chess boards the best, however they could not really recall the random chess boards, showing that their perceptual skills were chess training specific and not just due to good memorization skills.
Attention capacity
- Reduced attention demands which leads to automacity, increased information processing and decreased movement time meaning better movement, i.e. skating performance improves when the attentional demands of stick-handling decreases
Decreased effector competition
- Practice reduces the interference between 2 factors, such as in bimanual tasks. Able to perform bimanual tasks better, better coordination.
Motor programs
- One motor program is able to control more complex movements by controlling more sequences of that movement i.e. gearshift analogy, from multiple MP’s that must be outputted like a serial skill to a single MP that controls that entire complex skill. Means faster output of the motor program.
Improved error detection
- Can detect and analyze error better
- Makes a learner more self-sufficient, however now it is harder for them to utilize new ways of performing that movement or they don’t have coaches guiding them if they may be doing something “wrong”
Effector = region of the body that outputs the movement
