Practice Structure & Youth Development

Question 1

Define practice, as according to Schmidt (1990)

Answer 1

Any activity, overt or covert, through which a person seeks to establish or refine a performance.

Question 2

Define neural plasticity

Answer 2

The ability of the brain to modify and adapt both structure and function.

Question 3

How does practice impact brain matter?

Answer 3

Practice can ‘re-wire’ the brain by bringing about changes in the grey matter responsible for motor control.

Question 4

What was Ericcson’s practice model?

Answer 4

10 000 hours - early specialisation that follows a monotonic assumption.

Question 5

What are the characteristics of deliberate practice?

Answer 5

High cognitive demand, isn’t inherently enjoyable. Specifically designed to improve performance and often led by a coach/authority figure

Question 6

What is traditionally accepted theory for skill acquisition?

Answer 6

Learning occurs linearly. Skills are usually trained by minimising variability and correcting movement errors.

Question 7

TRUE or FALSE: Motor learning mat be aided by self-organisation and diversification.

Answer 7

TRUE, especially for open skills.

Question 8

What is blocked practice?

Answer 8

Same movement, repeated. Movement is refined or corrected before proceeding.

Question 9

What is variable practice?

Answer 9

Different tasks/ different variations of the same task in one session. There is no particular order to the practice with little to no repetition.

Question 10

Define contextual interference?

Answer 10

The amount of variation within practice.

Question 11

What charaterises practice with high contextual interference?

Answer 11

Worse training performance but better performance in competition.

Question 12

What is elaboration hypothesis? (Shea & Zimny, 1983)

Answer 12

Random practice in the early stages of learning causes a better understanding of movement variation whilst blocked practice forces a learner to perform movements more automatically, ignoring differences in movement.

Question 13

What is forgetting hypothesis? (Lee & Magill, 1985)

Answer 13

Training with high contextual interference improves performance as learners are more used to having to re-construct ‘forgotten’ movements and switch between movement tasks.

Question 14

What is schema theory? (Schmidt, 1975)

Answer 14

Actions are stored as individual contextual components and these are used to create recognition/recall schema. Random practice aids in schema development and recognition.

Question 15

Define specificity of learning theory. (Henry, 1960)

Answer 15

For learning to occur, the practice environment must be as close as possible to the competition environment.

Question 16

Define sport specialisation.

Answer 16

Mono-training and repetition for the purpose of skill acquisition and athlete development for a single sport. (Jayanthi et al., 2020)

Question 17

Define deliberate play.

Answer 17

Activities that are intrinsically motivating and provide immediate gratification. They peer-led and designed to maximise enjoyment.

Question 18

Define the 3 stages of the DMSP (Cote et al, 2007)

Answer 18

1. Early specialisation
2. Early sampling followed by specialisation and investment into a primary sport
3. Early sampling followed by participation at a recreational level.