Motor Learning 1 & 2 Flashcards
What is the definition of motor learning?
set of processes associated with practice or experience leading to relatively permanent changes in the capacity to produce skilled action
Explain what motor learning is:
- a process of acquiring capability for skilled action
- results from experience or practice
- cannot be directly measured
- results in permeant behavior changes
What is performance?
momentary strength or accessibility of a response
What does performance typically refer to?
temporary changes in motor behavior observed during practice
Is performance always observable?
yes
What factors does performance include?
anxiety, fatigue, and motivation
performance is a ….
measure of learning
does a change in performance imply learning has occurred?
not necessarily
What is a schema?
generally defined as an abstract representation in our memory after following multiple presentations of a class of objects
What is Schmidt’s Schema Theory based on?
Open loop processes and generalized motor program
what is the generalized motor program considered to contain?
the rules for creating the spatial and temporal muscle activation patterns needed to carry out a given movement
Schidmt’s Schema Theory says that:
After a moment, the following are “stored” in memory
- Initial movement conditions
- Parameters used in GMP
- Outcome of movement
- Sensory consequences of movement
Where does Schmidt’s Schema Theory say the information is “stored?”
in a motor recall and a sensory recognition schema (two states of memory)
What does motor recall schema do?
Selects a particular response
What does sensory recognition do?
Evaluated the response
error signal of movement goes back to schema, and schema is modified
Are both the motor recall schema and sensory recognition schema continually modified and updated?
yes
What is important in order to develop more rules for the schema?
Practicing variability
What serves as the basis for movement evaluation?
Sensory consequences being assessed after the desired outcome and initial conditions are determined
What are the clinical implications of the Schema Theory?
- Based on practicing tasks under many different conditions; variable practice
- Essential to forming accurate recall and recognition schemas
Limitation of Schema Theory #1
Variable practice should result in better learning and transfer –> truer for children than adults in healthy subjects
Limitation of Schema Theory #2
Relied on GMP –> difficult to find the neural mechanisms and rules for parameter development
Limitations of Schema Theory #3
Does not account for immediate ability to perform coordinated movement
What does the ecological (dynamical) theory say that motor learning is?
a process that increases the coordination between perception and action that is consistent with task and environmental constraints
the ecological (dynamical) theory states people search for optimal strategies based on what?
task conditions (both perceptual and motor)
How do we find the optimal strategies listed in the ecological (dynamical) theory?
through exploration of perceptual motor workspace
what do we need to specifically find in order to find optimal strategies?
- Perceptual cues that are the most relevant to performance of specific task (full glass = be careful moving to not spill)
- movements that are most efficient for that special task
What does perception provide?
the organizing structure for action
What is motor learning based in part on?
the education of attention to the task-relevant informational cues that are available in the interaction with the environment
In PT, what does perceptual information present in the form of?
feedback
3 ways to help someone learn as skill:
- help them understand nature of workspace
- understand normal strategies used for a task
- provide information (prescriptive and feedback) to facilitate search
what is the limitation of ecological theory?
few examples of systematic application to specific examples of learning a skill
What have all motor learning theories adopted?
“stages” of learning (acquisition of motor skill)
Fitts and Posner Three-Stage Model
- Most associated with Schema
- Information processing stages
Gentile’s Two-Stage Model
Refinement and diversity
Systems (three-stage) model
freezing/freeing DOF
What are the 3 stages in the Fitts and Posner Model?
- Cognitive stage: understands the nature of task, develop strategies, and determine how to evaluate task (instructive)
- Associative Stage: strategy has been selected (refinement; outcome is important)
- Autonomous stage: little to no attention required
Progressions in the cognitive stage
- variable performance as person tries variety of strategies
- performance improvement is large
Progressions in Associate Stage
Less variability but slower improvements in performance
Progressions in autonomous stage
can focus on other environmental factors that may impact execution of the skill
What does the Gentile Two Stage Model of Learning cover?
understanding the goal to diversification of learned test to changing environments
Stage 1 of Gentile Model of Learning
- Develop an understanding of task dynamics
- understand goal, develop movement strategies, understand environmental effect
- learning to distinguish relevant cues or features from not relevant ones
Stage 2 of Gentile Model of Learning
- Fixation/diversification to refine the movement
- developing the capability to adapt movement to changing test and environment and performing test consistently and efficiently
what does diversification refer to?
ability to manage open skills/environment
What does the Systems Three-Stage Model state?
controlling and releasing degrees of freedom is basis for learning skills
Novice Stage of Systems Three-Stage Model
- Movement is simplified by “freezing out” some of the available degrees of freedom
- holding body/segments rigidly throughout movement
- Coupling/constraining (temporarily) multiple joints/segments to force their movement as a unit
- Too many DOF may actually interfere with the to-be-learned movements
Advanced Stage of Systems Three-Stage Model
- Reinstatement and/or release of degrees of freedom
- “lifting of all restrictions –> incorporation of all possible DOF”
Explain the DOF in the advanced stage of the systems model:
- the DOF are part of the movement but introduce complicating reactive phenomena
- these are extinguished, not proactively, but in an innervationally reactive way
What is the expert stage of the systems model?
the highest stage of coordination freedom corresponds to a degree of coordination at which the organism is not only unafraid of reactive phenomena in a system with many DOF but is able to structure its movements so as to utilize entirely the reactive phenomena which arise
What does the expert stage use?
- the forces given for free
- really “relaxing”
- minimal innovational impulses (neural drive)
What is extrinsic feedback?
- what we need to really get good at something
- knowledge of results
- knowledge of performance
in order to learn, what MUST we receive?
some sort of information about performance
Bandwidth Feedback
Feedback provided only when performance is outside of a predetermined range
Advantages of Bandwidth Feedback
- Less frequent feedback as skill improves
- Negative feedback given (depends on context)
What is knowledge of results?
*outcome of movement Verbal feedback (most often) that informs the learner how well he accomplished the test
Who is knowledge of results important for?
those with impaired sensory systems who have difficulty with or are unable to process intrinsic information
What is the time between outcome stage and knowledge of results called?
Knowledge of results delay
- appears important that no new movements be put into this period as it may interfere with learning
how often should you give knowledge of results?
- early in skill development, fade feedback
- during skill acquisition, there is no difference in performance
What is knowledge of performance?
Provides information about the quality of the movement; does not contain information directly related to the goal
What is motor skill NOT?
It is NOT a formula of permanent muscle forces imprinted in some motor center
What IS motor skill?
an ability to solve one or another type of motor problem
What are we practicing in learning an action?
Practice is a type of “repetition without repetition”
- each repetition at solving a motor task is an act
- each act involved unique, non-repetitive neural and motor patterns
- we are repeating the PROCESS of its solution
Practice considerations - Massed vs. Distributed
Massed: trial time > rest time (CIMT)
Distributed: rest time > or equal to trial time (leads to better results in long term)
Practice conditions - Constant vs Variable
Practicing the actual task
Variable: changing up variable within the task (better results)
Practice Conditions - Random vs Blocked (multiple tasks)
- Better for randomly ordered conditions
- Due to contextual interference - makes learning more effective in the long run
- Context effects - factor which initially make learning a task more difficult
- Random is better for distinct motor skills
Practice Conditions - Whole vs Part training
- break task down into parts and practice components
- must include task specificity
Practice Conditions - Transfer
increases as similarities between practice and actual environment increase
Practice Conditions - Mental Practice
- can lead to improvements –> the extent to which it is like physical practice varies on the task
- Although not physically performing the task, the pathways in the CNS are still being used
Practice Conditions - Guidance vs Discovery Learning
- learner is physically guided
- works at onset of new task
- guidance is useful in cognitive stage (similar to priming)
Providing sensory input is…
- motivational
- triggering (intersensory facilitation and startle response)
- Not just facilitation and inhibition
Neuromuscular control implies…
An interplay of central and peripheral processes
- feedforward processes
- feedback: broader role for sensory input
How to integrate feedback and feedforward styles of control in treatment:
- best to employ treatment strategies (adapt task and/or environment) that foster the generation of an action plan (use-dependent learning; fast practice) –> naturally engages styles of control
- prove manual assistance techniques to facilitate and guide movement only where necessary and use sensory information as previously described
- return to task and environmental strategies and proper exercise dosage as volitional movement emerges
Active learning vs passive learning
- traditional approaches largely emphasized role of patient as recipient of sensory input applied by the therapist = passive learning
- active participation/problem solves helps patients solve motor problems
- use motor learning principles (structure practice and provide motivating feedback)
What is the underpinning of almost all motor learning?
Use-dependent (repetitive practice)
what does use-dependent learning enable?
- Sensorimotor adaptation
what is adaptation (implicit)?
the ability to adjust behavior to changing environmental or internal demand in order to maintain appropriate, goal directed motor performance
- cerebellum plays a major role
How can use-dependent learning be augmented?
- by reinforcement and instructive learning
what is reinforcement (reward based)?
- driven by outcome-based external feedback (knowledge of results)
- Basal ganglia plays a major role
what is instructive learning?
- strategy based; often explicit
- driven by knowledge of performance, modeling, external focus of attention, mental practice, motor imagery
- prefrontal cortex plays a major role
What does neuromuscular control depend on?
- behavioral and environmental context
- actor is embedded
- perceiving is the basis for action
- context requires adaptive capacity
Why should affordances for patients be created?
- provides opportunities for patients to formulate and execute adaptive responses based on relevant sensory information within a variety of functional contexts **
Why does coordination emerge?
for goal achievement
- emerges through constraints
- multistep control of movement
movements emerge as….
a function of test, individual, and environmental constraints
- importance of reactive forces, gravity, and exploit mechanisms
- compare the primarily neural explanations from traditional approaches vs a multifactorial explanation in contemporary models
