Motor Control Flashcards
What are the 3 approaches to explain the process of movement control?
- Information processing
- Dynamical systems
- Neuropsychological
What are the 3 fundamental stages of information processing?
- Stimulus identification (identify, categorise and prioritise info)
- Response selection
- Response execution
What are the criticisms/concerns with the information processing explanation of motor control and conceptualising the brain as a digital computer?
- The digital computer performs a series of discrete operations, one at a time. Research has shown humans can perform a variety of functions simultaneously (e.g. driving a car)
- How can all the individual and unique movement representations be stored in memory?
- How do we carry out a novel task?
What are (the?) 3 key aspects of a motor skill?
- Achieves a desired goal
- With maximum certainty
- Minimising energy/time used
What are (the) 4 categories of classification of motor skill?
- Control required - gross vs fine (note, many sports skills have aspects towards both ends of the continuum)
- Task organisation - discrete (kicking), serial (gymnastic routine) and continuous (running or swimming)
- Cognitive vs motor skills
- Open vs closed
Note: 1 - 3 are a continuum rather than discrete categories
Define motor and/vs cognitive skills
Motor skill - primary determinant of success is the quality of movement (“doing it correctly”)
Cognitive skill - primary determinant of success is the quality of decision re what to do (“knowing/deciding what to do”)
Define open and/vs closed skills
Closed skill - performed in an environment which is both stable and predictable (e.g. archery/darts). The object is waiting to be acted on by the performer
Open skill - performed in an environment which is unstable and unpredictable (e.g. volley in football). The performer must act upon the object according to the action of the object.
What are the conditions in Gentile’s 2x2 system to describe motor skills?
- Object of the response (stationary vs in-motion)
- Response requirements change from one response to the next? Yes/no
What are psychomotor skills?
Skills which involve a degree of decision making as well as motor performance
What are the 3 components of a motor skill?
- Perceive
- Decide (what, where, when)
- Move
What are the three most common experimental designs (regarding groups of participants)?
- Independent measures (two or more separate groups subject to differing conditions)
- Repeated measures (one group of people subject to differing conditions)
- Matched pairs (one group of people split into two groups with individuals matched by chosen relevant criteria)
What the problems associated with repeated measures design experiments?
What is one way to address some of the problems?
- Learning effect when repeating the [skill] under different condition - a problem of order of being subject to the various conditions
SOLUTION - “Counterbalancing” - divide group into 2 who undertake the conditions in different orders
- “Expectancy effect” - participants work out what the experimenter is testing for and they try to help to support the hypothesis
- Greater time requirement
- Greater likelihood participants will not turn up for testing the [second] condition
- Impact of the time elapsed between conditions (practice effect, fatigue, boredom)
What are the problems with matched pairs experimental design?
- Time-consuming
- Difficult to be certain participants matched on all relevant characteristics
What is perception?
The means by which information is acquired from the environment
What is the name for information which is acquired from an organ that receives information from the external environment?
Exteroreceptor information
What is another name for [internal] feel senses”?
Proprioceptive
What is the classification of organs that acquire information from within our bodies?
Proprioceptors
What is kinasthesia?
Information about movement
Why is perception “indirect” from an information processing perspective?
It depends on internal operations in order for the stimulus to become a full perception
What is an example supporting the view that visual perception involves using inferential processes (hypotheses and expectations)?
Visual illusions e.g. two lines of same length with arrows pointing out vs inwards appear different in length. We infer that the lines are of different length as a result of [cognition or effortful procesing].
How does [visual] perception interact with motivation and emotional state?
If [visual] perception requires effort to infer, then the motivational and emotional state of the individual is important and will affect the quality of perception.
What has been key difference in [cohort] which has been considered by research on visual perception.
What have been the 4 key findings?
Expert vs novice
- Speed of detection of sport specific/rich information more quickly e.g. volleyball players detecting the ball in pictures of games, time-outs, warm-ups. (But with no difference in accuracy)
- Precision of reaction (e.g. prediction of which part of a goal a puck is travelling towards) increases with more pre-contact cues i.e. the closer the ‘freeze-frame’ gets towards the point in time where the puck is hit and elite performers tend to perform better.
- Novices scan an object longer than experts (with the latter having a higher search rate i.e. a higher number of short duration fixations). Research carried out in soccer, tennis, basketball, rifle shooting, karate.
- Area of focus - study on baseball batters. Experts shifted focus to pitching arm and release point (whereas non-experts focussed on head and face) and accuracy and timing of swing judgement was significantly better.
What two pieces of information are sent to the body when performing a movement, on which proprioception is dependant?
- Instructions to the muscles
- Reference to be compared with the sensory feedback from the body during and after the action
i.e. is there a large disparity and has an error occurred?
What is the difference between an expert and novice with respect to the effectiveness of proprioception and how can a coach assist with this?
Expert (e.g. gymnast) is very sensitive to proprioceptive feedback
Novice may have no relevant sensory expectation (i.e. know what to feel).
Coach can
1) offer guidance on what they may feel
2) ask the performer to review the [quality of?] proprioception following good and bad performance
What is kinasthesia?
Information about limb position and movement (orientation speed and direction)
What are the three stages of information processing (according to Schmidt)?
- Stimulus identification
- Response selection
- Response programming
What psychological construct explains how we try filter relevant from irrelevant information in stimulus identification?
Signal detection theory (SDT)
What are the two axes of the graph in signal detection theory?
x-axis - strength of perceptual information perceived (note this is what is perceived rather than strength of the signal itself)
y-axis probability that a given signal strength will be perceived
What are the 4 categories of response in signal detection theory?
- Correct positive
- Correct negative
- False positive
- Miss
In signal detection theory, what two factors determine the likelihood of falling into any particular category?
- Bias (where the individual sets the cut-off point)
- The individual’s [sensitivity] to the signal
To what extent is sensitivity (per SDT theory) considered to be a key difference between experts and novices?
It is not, experts are considered to compensate in other ways:
- different cut-off point/bias (based on knowledge of cost-benefit)
- Different search strategy (advance info):
i. Experts use different info
ii. Eye movements are different between experts and novices
iii. Through learning experts learn to pick up more relevant info
QU: But does this mean they have a different x-axis, rather than the increased information resulting in increased sensitivity?