Stages of Learning Flashcards
Fitts and Posner’s Three Stage Model
Learning a motor skill involves three stages:
- Cognitive Stage
- Associative Stage
- Autonomous Stage
Cognitive Stage (Fitts and Posner’s Model)
1st stage: performances are heavily based on cognitive or verbal processes
- gains are dramatic and large (figuring out and retaining strategies that work)
- determine strategies (retain good strategies; discard bad ones)
- inconsistent performance (large number of trials)
Associative Stage (Fitts and Posner’s Model)
2nd stage: establish motor patterns
- environmental cues can be associated with appropriate movements (react to sensory info from environment)
- determine the most effective strategies
- improvements are more gradual
- movements are more consistent
- verbal aspects dropped
- detection of errors (cannot yet correct during movement)
Autonomous Stage (Fitts and Posner’s Model)
3rd stage: reduced attention demands
- skill has become largely automatic (no cognitive thinking)
- less interference from simultaneous activities (attention freed up)
- processing information from other aspects of the task
- detect and correct errors
Gentile’s Two-Stage Model
Stages are Presented from the perspective of the learner’s goals
- get idea of movement
- fixation/diversification
Difference between Fitts/Posner and Gentile
F&P: based on what a learner’s performance looks like at each given stage
Gentile: based on what the learner’s goals are
Gentile’s First Stage
Getting the idea of the movement
- idea: determining appropriate movement coordination patterns
- discriminate between environmental features (regulatory vs. non-regulatory; what sensory info do I need?)
- learner explores a variety of movement possibilities (trial and error)
Gentile’s Second Stage
depends on skill: open or closed
fixation and diversification
Fixation (Gentile’s Second Stage)
- second stage for closed skills
- refine movement patterns in order to produce them correctly, consistently, and efficiently
- goal is to do the same thing over and over (develop automaticity)
Diversification (Gentile’s Second Stage)
- second stage for open skills
- capability to modify the movement pattern according to environmental context characteristics
- need to quickly pick up info and adapt to different contexts
Performer and performance changes across the stages of earning
distinct characteristics seen in each learning stage for the learner and the skill performance
Rate of Improvement
- amount of improvement decreases as time goes on (power law of practice)
- represented by negatively accelerated curve
Limb-Segment coordination
- coordination patterns change from a “freezing” of limb segments to segments working together as a functional synergy
- beginners try to reduce number of degrees of freedom
Altering an old or preferred coordination pattern
coordination patterns change from the old pattern to a transitional state of no evident pattern to a new pattern
Muscles involved
the number of muscles involved decreases and the timing pattern of muscle group activation becomes appropriate for the action situation
-you are better able to control muscles and only recruit the ones you need
