Midterm #1 Flashcards
What is an ability?
A trait that:
- stable, enduring (can’t change or lose them)
- genetically-defined
- underlies skilled performance
- you cannot change through practice
Example of an ability
Keeping limbs steady, balance, walking, spacial awareness, height, visual ability
“Equipment” people inherit to perform real-world tasks
Motor Memory vs. Muscle memory
Muscles don’t remember things, CNS “recalls” similar/familiar programs so it’s easier to execute them
What are the components of motor behaviour
Motor control, motor learning, and motor development
What is Motor Control
How we produce movement into coordinated, useful responses
- Encompasses neural, physical, and behavioural aspects of movement, and everything about performing movement objectives/tasks
- Underlying mechanisms responsible for movement
- Sensorimotor system
Skill vs. Movement
A skill has a desired performance goal (ex. holding a handstand, jumping high), movements don’t have a desired goal (ex. wiggling a finger, idly kicking)
Skills require movement
What is Motor Learning
Improving motor control through practice
- (Re)Acquisition of motor skills
- Includes behavioural and neurological changes
- Relatively permanent change (“Use it or lose it”)
- You can measure only through observing their initial stable performance
Why is it Important to study behavioural aspect of motor control?
Because emotions and environmental factors change our capacity for motor control (confidence, perceived success, motivation, stress, etc.)
What are the 3 components of motor learning?
1) Acquisition - learning a skill and performing in different environments
2) Retention - Still having the skill after not practicing it for some time after the initial learning
3) Transfer - Being able to do a very similar task but still slightly different than the original (transferring the initial learned skill)
What is Motor Development?
Changes in behaviour because of maturation/growth
- It studies human development across the lifespan specifically related to either motor learning or control
Motor Development vs. Growth
Growth will happen regardless, motor development is not hormonally related and can occur with experience
What is Motor Skill?
Your capacity to do something with (proficiency)
- Maximum certainty (confidence)
- Minimum energy (easily)
- Minimum time (relatively quickly)
How proficient are you
OR
Your ability to do something in general
Can you do it
What is the Motor Cortex
Within cerebral cortex that plans, controls, and initiates voluntary movements
**DRAW DIAGRAM
What is Motor Performance?
The capacity to perform a motor skill/task
- Temporary and affected by other (temporary) factors
Motor Performance vs. Motor Learning
Motor performance is a way to track motor learning, and is done over many observations
- If motor performance is consistent = motor learning has occurred
Performance is a temporary assessment while learning is stable changes and involves transfer
3 Classifications of Things that Affect Skills
1) Organism’s state (mood, physiology, mental ability)
2) Task itself (Where, when, how)
3) Environmental (where, what other things do I need, predictability)
What is the Dynamic Systems Theory (DST)?
Classification system of things that affect skills
Components of the Organism level of classifying skills
Gross motor skills - Generally uses large, proximal muscles (ex. walking, running, jumping, kicking)
Fine motor skills - Generally uses small, distal muscles (ex. writing, curling toes, waving fingers, sewing)
Components of the Task level of classifying skills
Discrete Skill - has a distinct start and end point, pretty quick and defined task (ex. switching a light, jump, kick, throwing something)
Serial - In-between, a series of discreet skills strung together (ex. spiking a volleyball, hammering, gymnastics routine, assembly-line work)
Continuous - no defined beginning and end point, can go on for an undetermined amount of time
Components of the Environment level of classifying skills
Open skill - Unpredictable variables to take into account, you need to act according to the object’s actions and/or the environment, you have to make decisions (ex. throwing at a moving target with wind)
Closed skill - able to predictably execute movement repeatedly the same way, don’t have to account for unstable, changing factors, you are the only serious variable acting on the object, you have to focus on movement itself (dribbling a ball)
Motor vs. Cognitive Components and Relative importance
Motor - You need to focus on the execution of movement itself (Quality of MOVEMENT)
Cognitive - Selection of movement is more important, decision driven (Quality of DECISION)
Some tasks require either more motor or cognitive components, although both are necessary
What is an Experimental approach?
Think of a strict, sterile lab (closed environment) where individual differences don’t matter
- We are only focusing on manipulating the independent variable to measure dependent variable
- Leads to laws and principles
- Assumes lab findings (sample sizes) are applicable to real life (population)
- Describes average behaviour
What is a Differential approach?
Method to see differences in individuals’ abilities, and how they deviate from the average
- Specifically measures, describes, and relates differences between people
Experimental vs. Differential
Differential is preferred because clinicians and teachers use it, there is biological variability and this method takes it into account, however Experimental erases variability and the world doesn’t adhere to lab conditions
Differential is preferred even though we use laws from experimental
How to measure using differential approach
Use standardized tests
- Norm-referenced - quantitatively compares people to each other (ex. MCAT, VO2max scores, IQ tests)
Criterion-referenced - compares people to a previously determined set of criteria/standard (ex. minimum time to qualify for Olympics, set marking table)
What contributes to individual differences?
Body type
ABILITIES (genetically determined)
Attitudes
What are the two parts of studying individual differences?
Study of abilities - Stable, enduring traits that underlie skills, (but not the whole picture or we would never practice anything since abilities don’t change)
Study of prediction - Estimates the likelihood of future performance based on abilities and previous performance
Abilities vs. Skilled behaviours
Abilities - stable, enduring traits that are unchangeable and underlie skilled behaviour
Skilled behaviours are motor capabilities that result from practice
Relationship between abilities and skills
Each ability contributes to many different skills
A skill depends on multiple abilities
What were the Ability Hypotheses? (3 Evolutions of abilities)
- General motor ability hypothesis (Bryce & McCloy)
- Henry’s specificity hypothesis
- Groupings of abilities
What is the general motor ability hypothesis?
Says many different but motor abilities can be grouped into a singular global motor ability (sports kid vs. non-athletic kid)
- People who are proficient in one skill should also be proficient in similar skills (because of grouping of abilities
What is Henry’s specificity hypothesis?
Says abilities exist independently of each other
- Correlations among different skills are low, even similar ones, but starkly different skills can have high correlation (indicates there isn’t a general ability)
- Henry saw there was no general ability to balance
What is the groupings of abilities (hypothesis)?
They are common groupings of abilities (subcategories) that inform the performance of tasks, discovered using factor analysis (comparing one kind of ability with the other)
- Perceptual motor abilities
- Physical proficiency
- General coordination
- General timekeeping
- Specific timekeeping
What are Perceptual motor abilities?
Coordination of senses and motor task execution
- Reaction time
- Manual dexterity - manipulating objects with hands, arms (dribbling a basketball)
- Finger dexterity - fine manipulation with fingers, wrists (buttoning a shirt, turning pages, typing)
- Multi-limb coordination - Simultaneous control of limbs (playing drums, piano, pat head while rubbing tummy while jumping on 1 foot)
What is physical proficiency abilities
- Strength (dynamic, static, explosive, core)
- Balance (whole body actions, with(out) visual cues
- Stamina (cardiovascular endurance)
“Physical fitness abilities”
What are General coordination factors?
- Movement rate (repetitive tapping - just doing it over and over again)
- Motor tapping (timed tapping - tapping at specific times)
- Perceptual timing (judge time interval duration - estimate how much time has passed)
- Force control (pushing a button hard vs. gently)
What is General timekeeping?
Keeping track of time in general
Every person has a consistent timekeeping ability, and it’s different from person-to-person
What is Specific timekeeping ability?
Timekeeping ability for a specific task
- Timing ability can depend on task
- because different timing processes needed for different types of tasks
What is anticipation?
A way the subject tries to overcome reaction time delays to optimize performance, organizes a response in advance, differentiates a novice and an expert
Affects:
- Response selection
- Execution
Anticipatory response (in foreperiod)
Types of anticipation
Spatial - where/what event anticipation
Temporal - how/when event anticipation
- Motor Selection and Programming, depends on task (motor or cognitive)
What is the Double stimulation paradigm
A research design where the subject has to react in 2 different ways to 2 different stimuli in a very short period of time
- Stimulus onset asynchrony
Has a Psychological refractory period - delay in reaction to the second stimulus
What is Stimulus onset asynchrony
Time between presentation of stimuli
Explain Bottleneck response in response programming
“Resistance” of information processing since the subject just dealt with the first stimulus
- Response programming stage is inhibited by the parallel stages in the first reaction
What is the Inverted U-principle?
When arousal level is moderate, performance is excellent, and when arousal is low or high (not enough or too much excitation) performance is poor
You can focus on the right things and ignore less relevent things
What is the optimal zone of functioning and what does it depend on?
Generally moderate is best
Depends on:
- person
- task
- environment
Arousal vs. Anxiety
Arousal - Regulated by sleep-wake cycle, activity
Anxiety - Distress about future uncertainties (often associated with arousal), perception of threat to self, excitation in response to stress
What are the types of Memory systems?
- Short-term sensory store memory - lasts a few secs
- Short term memory - lasts about 1 min
- Long term memory - no limit
Components of Long term memory
- Declarative knowledge - episodic (concrete info and personal experiences), semantic (network and associations of facts, concepts and skills), conscious (can be verbalized)
- Procedural knowledge (knowing how to perform a task, instructional, not always able to be described though)
