Skill in Sport Flashcards
Define the term skill
“Skill is the consistent production of goal-oriented movements, which are learned and specific to the task.” McMorris, 2004
Main Characteristics of Skills
Goal Oriented Maximising Minimising Learnt through Practice Max Certainty
Describe the different types of skill
Motor skill
Weightlifting, for example, is mostly a motor skill because it emphasizes movement and does not require much thinking. Other examples include sprint racing and wrestling.
Cognitive skill
E.g. Playing chess because it requires lots of thinking. Success in chess is not associated with the execution of the movements. Knowledge of the rules, game objectives and team tactics are cognitive in nature, and are associated with the decision-making element of game play
Perceptual skill
The golfer receives information about the type of surface, the run of the green, the distance of the ball from the hole, and other environmental conditions through their perceptual senses. Perceptual senses include vision, vestibular (senses that help you with balance closely related to your hearing), haptic (touch) and auditory.
Perceptual-motor skills
These skills involve the interpretation of environmental stimuli and the motor response to this sensory information. Perceptual-motor skills depend on high perceptual ability and are very important in activities that require the performer to adapt to the environment. Dribbling with the ball in soccer to beat a defender.
Types of Skills
- Intellectual skills or cognitive skills: Skills which involve the use of a person’s mental powers, e.g. problem solving, verbal reasoning (verbal skill).
- Perceptive skills: Interpreting and making sense of information coming in via the senses.
- Motor skills: Smoothly executing physical movements and responses.
Classifying a skill
The amount of physical effort/size of musculature required to perform the skill successfully (fine motor skills; gross motor skills).
The stability of the environment in which the skill is to be performed. (closed motor skills; open motor skills)
The distinctiveness of the movement characteristics(discrete motor skills; serial motor skills; continuous motor skills)
1. 2. 3.
4. 5.
External and Internal Paced Skills Interaction Continuum
Fine motor/gross
Closed
Open
Fine motor skills involve the cooperative use of small muscle groups and the senses of sight and touch (visual motor tracking). The performer must also balance the use of force and fine touch control.
Gross motor skills involve a combination of large muscle actions that results in a coordinated movement.
Closed Motor Skills: are performed in a predictable environment where there are no interruptions or changes in the surroundings.
Open Motor Skills: are performed in an environment that is constantly changing and is externally paced.
Discrete
Serial
Continuous
Discrete Skills: involve movements of brief duration, and are defined by a distinct beginning and end
External Paced
Internal Paced
External and Internal Paced Skills
External Paced: Action is determined by external sources and involves the performer in reaction.
controls the rate at which the activity is carried out and decides when to initiate movement.
Individual, Coactive, Interactive
A method of describing groups of skills is to group them according to whether the skill is performed without reference to another player (individual skill)
Outline ability
Ability is a stable, enduring characteristic, that is genetically determined and may be solely perceptual, solely motor or a combination i.e. psychomotor.
It should be appreciated that abilities underpin specific skills.
For example, in order to perform a skill such as the 100 meter sprint individuals require motor abilities such as explosive strength and speed of limb movement.
Distinguish between physical proficiency abilities and perceptual motor abilities
Fleishman sub-divided abilities into physical proficiency and perceptual motor abilities.
• Physical proficiency abilities (physical factors) are what you might expect to find in a chapter on exercise physiology. They relate to physical or structural aspects of the body;
• The perceptual-motor abilities may be less obvious to you but are a combination of how we make sense of our environment (perception) and how we act (motor control) within that environment. They are physical attributes that combine the senses, involve movement control and may be associated with visual and/or auditory perception or cognitive speed;
Define the term Technique
In general terms, technique is a “way of doing”.
In the performance of a specific sports skill, it is defined as the “way in which that sports skill is performed”. In other works, it is the way the individual controls his/her limbs.
In order to perform skillfully the person must have the necessary technique or techniques and choose the correct one to use in any particular situation.
Discuss the differences between a skilled and a novice performer
A skilled performer has learnt how to achieve a particular performance goal at almost every attempt – with minimal waste of physical and mental energy, or time.
A number of perceptual abilities and physical attributes has been identified by sports scientists to explain differences between skilled and novice
performers.
A skilled performer develops special attributes (such as anticipation and relevant cue recognition) through experience and practice.
Browne et.al 2000
These are some of the factors which distinguish the skilled performer from the novice: ▪ Consistency of performance. ▪ Accuracy ▪ Control ▪ Learned ▪ Efficiency ▪ Goal directed ▪ Fluency
Information processing
Information processing is the system by which we take information from our surrounding environment, use it to make a decision and then produce a response:
Describe Welford’s model of information
processing
Perceptual
mechanisms
To interpret information
Translatory mechanisms
To make decisions
Effector mechanisms
Transfers those decisions to the muscles to produce a movement response
Outline the components associated with sensory
input
The senses are responsible for relaying information about the environment to the brain. This information is then interpreted by the brain based on past experience of similar situations, and is held in the long-term memory (LTM). They can be divided into:
Extroceptors
They provide information from outside of the body. The main exteroceptors involved in sensation with regard to sport are vision and audition.
▪Visual ▪Smell ▪Audition ▪Taste
▪Touch ▪Temperature
Interoceptors
Information from the internal organs of the body, heart, lungs, digestive system, etc. This information is passed to the central mechanism of the brain via the body’s sensory nervous system, e.g. how fast the heart is beating, register fatigue, etc.
Proprioceptors Nerve receptors within the body in muscles, joints, etc. providing intrinsic information regarding what class of movement is occurring. Kinaesthetic information is also provided about the feel or sense of movement. Components: equilibrium and kinesthesis
Explain the signal detection process
Explain the signal detection process Often referred to as the detection–comparison– recognition process (DCR)
Individuals receive over 100 000 pieces of information per second. This may be information from the environment and/ or from within the person themselves.
Thus actually perceiving an important piece of information, what he called a “signal”, is problematic. In order to explain how we do this, Swets developed the signal detection theory.
Perception
The factors you identified are all stimuli. A stimulus is any item of information which stands out from the non-essential
information noise (background noise). Swets
Stimuli in a game situation include things like the ball, but also includes opponents, conditions, team-mates, etc.
Explain the signal detection process
Detection
Comparison
Recognition
Why is memory?
The memory is seen as a critical part of the overall learning process. It is central to our ability to receive the relevant information, interpret it, use it to make decisions and then pass out the appropriate information via the body’s effector systems.
What is long-term memory?
No Capacity limitations
although sometimes we have difficulty in retrieving memories.
Short-term memory?
7+2
Retention and passage to the LTM are dependent on rehearsal, mental, physical or both.
• 90 percent of information is lost within 10 to 15 sec. Sometimes up to a minute
Short term sensory store
It is only retained if attended to
Prevents confusion and overload
• It is lost within 0,5sec
Discuss the relationship between selective
attention and memory
Memory and Selective Attention
✓ Owing to the apparent limited neurological capacity of the short term memory (STM), it is acknowledged that there is some form of selection system in order to prioritise stimuli/information, although there are disagreements about the positioning of the filtering system
Experience and Selective Attention
Experience and Selective Attention
✓More experienced athletes can better use their long-term memory to improve their selective attention
✓They can improve SA through over-learning
✓Experienced athletes selectively attend to stimuli quicker than less experienced athletes. They also better filter into relevant and irrelevant noise
Discuss the relationship between selective attention and memory
Rehearsal - the more a memory is rehearsed, the more likely it is that it will be remembered
Meaningfulness - the more meaningful a memory is, the more likely it is to be remembered
Speed of learning - the quicker a process is learned, the more likely it is to be remembered
Selective attention can be improved
Selective attention can be improved by:
• Lots of relevant practice
• Increasing intensity of stimulus
• Use of language associated with or appropriate to the
performer in order to motivate and arouse
• Use of past experience/transfer to help explanations
• Direct attention
Channel capacity
Parallel Hypothesis
the brain can deal with only one stimulus at a time (one piece of information)
• It is s thought of as a single channel organ
PARALLEL HYPOTHESIS
Some decisions, however, are simultaneous or parallel in nature, in other words, processes are occurring independently from one another.
It is generally recognised that if information processing is to be applied to the learning of motor skills there is mixture of serial and parallel processing.
Compare different methods of memory
improvement
REHEARSAL CODING
BREVITY CLARITY
CHUNKING ORGANIZATION
ASSOCIATION PRACTICE
How can memory be improvement?
Verbal - repeating information over and over either aloud or silently
Motor - drawing or writing information or performing a sequence of actions repeatedly
Visual - looking at information over and over.
CHUNKING
• Different pieces of information can be grouped (or chunked) together then remembered as one piece of information.
• For example, instead of trying to remember each separate move made by each player in a line-out in Rugby or a penalty corner in Hockey, a player might remember the whole drill as a single number.
Define the term response time
Response time -the time from the introduction of a stimulus to the completion of the action required to deal with the problem (McMorris 2004). It is also an ability that has individual and group variance (like gender and age)
Reaction time -
The time that elapses from the sudden onset of a stimulus to the beginning of an overt response (Oxendine 1968).
Movement time- Movement time is the time it takes to carry out the motor aspects of the performance.
Outline factors that determine response time
Reaction time includes: • Stimulus transmission • Detection • Recognition • Decision to respond • Nerve transmission • Initiation of action
Evaluate the concept of psychological refractory period
Psychological Refractory Period (PRP)
The opponent then processes this information in order to prepare and initiate a response. As the opponent’s response to the first “dummy” or fake action is initiated, the player changes the move or shot causing the opponent to re-evaluate the situation and react to the second set of stimuli.
The processing of the new information, for instance a drop shot in badminton rather than the anticipated overhead shot, takes time, creating a slight time delay.
Describe a motor programme
Defined as a set of movements stored as a whole in the memory regardless of whether feedback is used in their execution.
IBO February 2007
An abstract code or structure, representing one or more skilled movements, stored in the central nervous system. The motor programme resembles a computer programme because it appears to consist of a series of neural commands, which when initiated result in the production of a particular sequence of coordinated movement.
Compare motor programmes from both open and
closed loop perspectives
Open loop
Motor programmes are generalised series of movements stored in the long-term memory and each is retrieved by a single decision.
They usually explain how we perform very quick actions in sport, especially closed skills. Some almost automatic movements do not seem to be under conscious control.
If a decision had to be made about every single muscle action to catch a ball the information processing would take far too long. This kind of control over actions is know as open loop control.
Outline the role of feedback in information processing models
Feedback
Feedback is the final part in the information processing system.
Feedback is generally referred to as all the information in its various forms that a performer receives as a result of movement (response produced information).
When a performer is taking part in physical activity in any shape or form, information is fed back into the system either during the activity or after the activity.
This information is used to either detect and correct errors during the activity or to make changes/ improvements next
time the skill is performed.
Types of feedback
Intrinsic
Extrinsic
knowledge of results
knowledge of performance
Positive
Negative
Concurrent
Terminal
Outline the role of feedback with the learning
process
There are numerous studies to support the importance of feedback (KR) in the learning process.
Although skills can be learned without feedback it is generally accepted that feedback makes the learning process more efficient by improving error correction and developing better performance.
Wesson et.al 2005
Distinguish between learning and performance
Occasionally good or one of performances are not a true indication of learning having taken place. There has to be a relatively permanent change in performance over time as a result of practice and or experience.
Learning is a relatively permanent change in performance brought about by experience, excluding changes due to maturation and degeneration.
Performance is a temporary occurrence, fluctuating over time.
A change in performance over time is often used to infer learning.
Describe the phases (stages) of learning
Cognitive/Verbal (early phase)
Associative/Motor (intermediate phase)
Autonomous (final phase)
Outline the different types of learning curve
Linear
▪ As practice increases, so does performance in a
proportional relationship
Positively accelerated curve
▪ Indicates slight performance gains initially then rapid improvements in performance (ie. the task took a long
time to learn).
Negatively accelerated curve
▪ Indicates rapid initial improvements then lesser gains from practice (learning slowed).
Learning plateau
▪ This indicates little learning is taking place.
Define the concept of transfer
Transfer in skill acquisition is the influence of learning and/or performance of one skill on the learning and/or performance of another. If this influences a skill yet to be learned or performed it is called proactive transfer, if it influences the performance of a previous learnt skill it is called retroactive.
▪ Positive ▪ Negative ▪ zero
Outline the types of transfer
Bilateral transfer ▪ Skill to skill ▪ Practice to performance ▪ Abilities to skills ▪ Bilateral ▪ Stage to stage ▪ Principles to skills
Outline the different types of practice
Distributed practice: is seen as practice with relatively long breaks or rest periods between each attempt or block of attempts
▪ Better when the individual is: ▪ Beginner
▪ Less experienced
▪ Limited preparation (physical/mental) ▪ Less motivated
Massed practice: is seen as being almost continuous practice with very little or no rest at all between attempts or blocks of trials.
▪ Better when the individual is: ▪ Experienced
▪ Older
▪ Fitter
▪ More motivated
Fixed (drill) practice:
▪ a specific movement is practiced repeatedly, often referred to as a drill. This type of practice is ideal for skills that are always performed in the same way, that do not require adapting to the environment. Closed, interactive and coactive skills tend to require fixed practice to allow the motor sequence to be perfected, since they will remain the same in practice as they will in competition .
Outline the different types of practice
Variable practice
Mental practice
Explain the different types of presentation
Whole
Part
Whole-part:-whole
Progressive part:
Outline the spectrum of teaching styles
Command
Reciprocal
Problem-solving approach
