Practice Flashcards
How much practice do patients get in the typical rehabilitation setting?
only 36 minutes per day with either a physical therapist or occupational therapist
How can we increase the amount of practice our patients get in a day?
- Give pts HEP for more reps
- Every TV commercial, do some sort of activity
- Use more active rest periods (do Edu then, or switch from gross -> fine motor skills, etc)
- Personalizing the exercise
Blocked Practice
same conditions for a block of trials, then switch to new block/conditions-better for cognitive learning
Random Practice
all conditions are practiced in random order-better for retention
Blocked Practice improves…
Training Effects (temporary effects) good during cognitive phase and helps pt establish the task
Random Practice improves…
Retention (learning effects)
better for later phases of learning
So, is random practice better than blocked practice?
Depends on the situation and what stage of learning the pt is at
Get more retention
For which tasks or situations is blocked practice appropriate?
During the cognitive phase of learning
For which tasks or situations is random practice appropriate?
During the later phases of learning-helps make task concrete
Why do patients also need a combination of blocked and random practice?
- blocked practice to truly acquire the skill
- random practice to be able to generalize the skill to several situations
- especially for cognitively involved patients
Why do pts do well with random practice?
Patient will need a range of experiences to drawn upon so it is more likely that in a new situation, they have a usable motor memory
Structuring Practice-
Elaborative and Distinctive Processing Theory
- Random practicing forces the learner into more elaborate and distinctive processing of the tasks to be learned
- Random practice promotes comparing and contrasting of consecutive trials
- Blocked practice does not allow for these comparisons due to the repetitive nature of the blocked schedule
Structuring Practice- Forgetting and Reconstruction Theory
- during random practice, performers “forget” the solution for the upcoming action and are required to generate a new solution for each practice trial
- during blocked practice, the previous motor program is still available in working memory to be utilized, whereas in random practice, a motor program must be reconstructed
What is learned with mental practice?
- learn the cognitive elements of the task
- motor programs are actually being “run off” but the “gain” is turned down
- -possibility that very small forces are being produced (not enough) to cause movement
- -the performer receives GTO feedback from the muscles due to the extreme sensitivity of the GTOs
Mental Practice: Conclusion
- Physical practice is preferable whenever possible, but when physical practice is not possible, mental rehearsal is an effective method for augmenting a person’s learning.
- Useful when a patient has poor motor control of a body part
Open task
practice in a variety of environments with varying equipment, objects, circumstances, etc
Closed task
practice under constant conditions
Variable practice
- variable practice seems to generate a general capacity to perform a novel version of the task
- variable practice increases generalizability of the skill
Specificity of Practice
simulate “real” conditions:
- same or similar environment
- same or similar task
- same or similar objects
- Speed and/or accuracy constraints
TASK Specificity
- Specificity effects when training and performance comparisons involve the same types of exercise
- Examples
- -Isometric, concentric versus eccentric exercise
- -same ranges of motion
- -same movement velocity
Part-practice
- practice parts of the task
- practice the more difficult elements
- caution: practicing elements in isolation may change whole task
Whole-practice
Practice entire task as a whole
Continuous Tasks
- must be practiced as a whole
- parts occur simultaneously
- how one part effects other is important
- momentum or inter-joint forces or tightly synchronized elements
Part and Whole practice is Task Dependent
- when practicing continuous tasks in which the coordination (or timing or momentum) are linked, whole-practice is more effective
- when practicing tasks that have simultaneous demands or when one body part must coordinated with another body part, whole-practice is necessary (example: two hands in piano playing or gait and carrying something)
- serial tasks that contain distinct information processing components may benefit more from part-practice
Part and Whole Practice example-STS
- Zero-momentum strategy - there is a break in the velocity profiles between phase 2 & 3, each of the parts can be practiced separately
- Momentum strategy - there is no break in the velocity profile between phases 2 & 3 so should practiced as a whole
Videotaping Performance
four groups:
- Knowledge of Performance (KP) only
- videotape only
- videotape + attention cues
- videotape + correcting cues
Specific verbal cues identifying critical aspects of the various movements should be provided simultaneously with the videotape replay
