Motor Learning and Control Flashcards
Definitions
Motor Skill:
The observable attempt of a person to produce a voluntary action to achieve a specific goal/task
Motor Learning:
Changes in internal processes that determine a
person’s capability for producing a motor task.
The acquisition of knowledge or skills through
study, experience, or being taught
Transfer of Learning
Positive transfer:
- Practicing drills and game-based activities with strong transfer to the actual game
- Learning can be positively transferred from practice to game situation when drills are similar in nature to the criterion
Negative transfer:
- Not common
- Activities that may negatively transfer to the criterion task need to be avoided when performance is critical
- playing mini-golf before golf tournament
Near transfer:
- Desired when the learning goal is a task that is relatively similar to the training task
- Transfer of learning is specific and closely approximates the ultimate situation
- Practicing various plays before a volleyball tournament
Far transfer:
- When interested in developing more general capabilities for a variety of skills
- Occurs from one task to another very different task
- Best applies when beginning to learn a skill
- For example, ‘overhand throw’
Transfer-Appropriate Processing (Lee, 1988)
- The notion that the best learning experiences are those that approximate most closely the processing activities of the transfer condition
- The ‘transfer’ condition is different depending on the athletes skill level
Stages of Motor Learning
Cognitive -> Associative -> Autonomous
Novice -> Expert
Controlled -> Automatic
Declarative -> Procedural
Cognitive Stage
- Begins when task first introduced
- Performance is slow and awkward
- Performance is cognitively demanding
- Simplifying the skills is recommended
- Self-talk and verbal reminders facilitate
Instructions are required for error correction. Generally they should be:
- Verbally transmitted (verbal stage)
- Serve to convey the general concept of the skill
- Short and concise
Associative Stage
- Performance becomes controlled and consistent
- Focus is on performing and refining the skill
- Concentration is directed towards smaller details (e.g., timing)
- Fewer errors (identify themselves)
- Diminished self-talk
- Reduced instructions
- Increased complexity of the task
Autonomous Stage
- Performance is automatic and very proficient
Minimal verbal self-instruction
Attentional demands:
- Creativity
- Strategy
- Environment
Performance improvements are:
- Slow
- Less obvious (e.g., reduced mental effort, improved style, reduced anxiety
- Main aim of the coach is to maintain motivation
Learning Theories
Classic Learning Theories:
- Closed Loop Theory
- Schema Theory
Contemporary Learning Theories:
- OPTIMAL Theory
- Challenge-Point Framework
Adams’ (1971) Closed Loop Model
- Motor learning model where movement is guided by feedback
- Memory trace starts the action
- Perceptual trace compares movement to the correct model and adjusts using feedback
- Works best for slow, continuous skills
- Practice strengthens the perceptual trace for accuracy
Schmidt’s Schema Theory (1975)
- Rather than storing an infinite number of references of correctness, the brain stores relationships between certain elements
- Referred to as schema
- An abstraction or a set of rules for determining a movement
IMPLICATION: much of human performance is rule-based
Recall schema:
- The analysis of many relationships between initial conditions and knowledge of the results of any action
- Deciding what to do based on prior experiences
Recognition schema:
- The analysis of the relationships between actual and expected feedback (largely kinaesthetic/proprioceptive/haptic)
Information necessary to form
movement schema:
(1) Initial conditions
(2) Response specifications
(3) Sensory consequences
(4) Response outcome
Two independent schema
constructed through practice:
- Recall Schema [Develops motor programmes in novel situations] (1) and (2)
- Recognition Schema [Compares actual and
expected feedback] (3) and (4)
OPTIMAL Theory of ML
(Wulf & Lewthwaite, 2016)
Optimizing
Performance
Through
Intrinsic
Motivation and
Attention for
Learning
- Accounts for how motivational and attentional factors contribute to performance and learning
W&L argue that practice conditions must do the following to have a beneficial effect on motor performance and learning;
1) Promote learner autonomy (i.e., the need to actively participate in determining one’s own behaviour)
2) Enhance expectancies for future performance success (i.e., by making one feel capable and competent)
3) Allow one to adopt an external focus of attention
Challenge-Point Framework
- Motor learning is optimized when task difficulty matches the learner’s skill level.
Too easy = little learning
Too hard = overwhelming
Best learning occurs at the “optimal challenge point”
Balances task complexity and learner ability to maximize learning and engagement
Task Difficulty
Nominal task difficulty:
- Includes only the characteristics of the task, irrespective of the person performing it or the conditions under which the task is performed
Functional task difficulty:
- Refers to how challenging the task is relative to the skill-level of the individual performing the task and to the environmental/situational conditions under which it is being performed
Manipulating Functional Task Difficulty?
1) Constant vs Variable Practice
2) Blocked vs Random Practice
What Instructional Approach?
Explicit:
- Declarative
- Coach focused
- Traditional method
Implicit:
- Procedural
- Athlete focused
- Little or no instruction
What are the associated problems with explicit instructions?
- Overloads working memory
- Overloads attentional capacity
- Implicit learning involves less demand on working memory, less attentional processes, and reduced rule formation
Types of implicit learning includes:
- (Guided) Discovery Learning
- Analogy Learning
- Errorless Learning
Feedback
Intrinsic feedback:
Information athletes receive as a natural consequence of moving, provided by athletes own sensory systems
Extrinsic feedback:
Not a natural consequence of executing a response; must be provided by some external source (coach, teammate, stopwatch, judge’s score, videotape replay, etc.)
Type of Extrinsic Feedback
KR (KNOWLEDGE OF RESULTS):
- Feedback associated with the outcome of a movement relative to its environmental goal, e.g., the landing position of a golf shot
KP (KNOWLEDGE OF PERFORMANCE):
- Feedback relating to the movement pattern (kinetic or kinematic), e.g., the motion of the hips or shoulders
Functions of Extrinsic Feedback
Extrinsic feedback can serve at least four possible functions:
1) Motivation: Energizes learners to increase their efforts to achieve the goals they have set for themselves
- Reinforcement: Causes learners to repeat the actions they have produced, or, in the case of punishment, to avoid repeating the actions
- Information: Indicates, either directly or indirectly, the kinds of things learners
should do to refine their movement patterns and correct their errors - Dependence: Causes learners to rely too heavily on instructional feedback and produces diminished performance when the feedback is later withdrawn
How often to give feedback?
- Instantaneous: Feedback provided to learners immediately following movement completion
- Delayed: Feedback provided to learners several seconds or more following movement completion
- Faded: Frequency of feedback is high during initial performance attempts and diminishes during later learning
- Summary: Feedback is provided after multiple trials providing an average (summary) of the previous block of trials
- Bandwidth: Feedback given only when their errors exceed a certain tolerance level
Guidance Hypothesis:
- The role of augmented feedback in learning is to guide performance toward the goal of the task. However, if it is provided too frequently, it can cause the learner to develop a dependency on its availability and therefore to perform poorly when it is not available
- Giving learner decision to receive feedback generally enhances learning compared to control and yoked groups of participants (e.g., Chiviacowsky & Wulf, 2002, 2005)
- SV interviews reveal learners prefer feedback after good trials and request it more often for good compared to poor trials
- Interviews of yoked (experimenter-
controlled) learners show a similar pattern
