Task 7

Question 1

What are features of skill memories?

Answer 1

1. Are difficult to convey except by direct demonstration → nondeclarative
2. May be acquired without awareness → implicit
3. Require several repetitions → operant conditioning

Question 2

What is a perceptual- motor skill? And what are the two distinctions of this skill?

Answer 2

Learned movement patterns guided by sensory inputs (e.g. athletic abilities, musicians)

• Closed skill- a skill that involves performing predefined movements that, ideally, never vary. (e.g. gymnastics, diving)
• Open skill- A skill in which movements are made on the basis of predictions about changing demands of the environment. (e.g. soccer, hockey)

Question 3

What is a cognitive skill?

Answer 3

Skills that require problem solving or the application of strategies (e.g. reading, budgeting money)
o E.g.: playing cards, budgeting money, taking standardized tests, time management

Question 4

What is the power law of practice?

Answer 4

A law stating that the degree to which a practice trial improves performance diminishes after a certain point, so that additional trials are needed to further improve the skill; learning occurs quickly at first, then slows.

Question 5

What are the four types of training?

Answer 5

1. Massed Practice: short term
performance is enhanced
2. Spaced Practice: Better retention in the
long run
3. Constant Practice: Practice under the
same conditions.
4. Variable Practice: Practice under
different conditions.

Question 6

What is explicit and implicit learning?

Answer 6

Explicit learning
o A learning process that includes the ability to verbalize about the actions or events being learned.
Implicit learning
o Learning that occurs without the learner’s awareness of improvements in performance or, in the case of people with amnesia (anterograde amnesia), awareness that practice has occurred.

Question 7

What are motor programs?

Answer 7

A sequence of movements that an organism can perform automatically (with minimal attention).

Question 8

What are the different stages of acquiring skills by Paul Fitts?

Answer 8

1. Cognitive stage - in this stage, an individual must exert some effort to encode the skill on the basis of information gained through observation, instruction, and trial and error.
2. Associative stage - in this stage, learners begin using stereotyped actions when performing a skill and rely less on actively recalled memories of rules.
3. Autonomous stage – in this stage, a skill or subcomponents of the skill become motor programs.

Question 9

What is talent?

Answer 9

a person’s genetically endowed ability to perform a skill better than most.

Question 10

How can skills be transferred?

Answer 10

Performance is best if practice and test
scenarios are identical. Performance
worsens as required and practice skill start
to differ (Identical elements theory)
Bonus:
Transfer-appropriate processing (facts)
Transfer specificity (skills)

Question 11

What is the time course of motor skill learning?

Answer 11

Fast learning: very quick improvement after the first number of trials
Slow learning: sets in around 8 hours after the initial training; structural changes and modification for perceptual modules; cortical areas get enlarged

Question 12

What is transfer specificity? To what theory did it lead and who proposed it?

Answer 12

The restricted applicability of learned skills to specific situations
-Led to identical elements theory - Thorndike’s proposal that learned abilities transfer to novel situations to an extent that depends on the number of elements in the new situation that are identical to those in the situation in which the skills were encoded.

Question 13

What is the learning set formation?

Answer 13

Acquisition of the ability to learn novel tasks rapidly based on frequent experiences with similar tasks.

Question 14

How do skills decay?

Answer 14

Forgetting curves are similar to learning curves, forgetting occurs quickly at first, then gets slower

Question 15

What role does the basal ganglia play in skill learning?

Answer 15

Initiating and maintaining movements; they are particularly important for controlling the velocity, direction, and amplitude of movements
-> based on specific environmental cues

Question 16

Basal Ganglia: inputs and outputs?

Answer 16

Inputs: cortical neurons-> provide basal ganglia with information about what is happening in the world; mainly sensory information that has been processed by the dorsal striatum
Output: mainly to thalamus (affecting interactions between neurons in the thalamus and motor cortex) and the brainstem (influencing signals sent to the spinal cord)

Question 17

What does basal ganglia and hippocampal damage lead to in the normal radial maze?

Answer 17

Basal ganglia damage: learns task normally; damage does not disrupt rat’s memories for events
Hippocampal damage: major problems with this task

Question 18

What does basal ganglia and hippocampal damage lead to in the illuminated arms maze?

Answer 18

Basal ganglia: difficulties -> damage seems to prevent rats from learning the perceptual-motor skills of avoiding dark arms
Hippocampal damage: task is easier, because they only need to associate light with food

Question 19

What happens if the basal ganglia is damaged?

Answer 19

Hinders use of skill memories and ability to learn new skill (e.g. Parkinson’s disease)

Question 20

What four basic patterns of neural activity in the basal ganglia can be seen during perceptual-motor skill learning?

Answer 20

1. some neurons fire at start of trial
2. some neurons fire most when instructional sound was broadcast
3. some responded strongly when rat turned right or left
4. some neurons fire at the end of the trial
   - > in the beginning: fired most when rat turned right or left
   - > with practice: only fired at the beginning and at the end (suggests motor plan)

Question 21

What role does the cerebellum play in skill learning?

Answer 21

Key role in learning to predict important events , especially

• in the formation,
• execution, and
• timing of conditioned responses

Question 22

Cerebellum: Inputs and Outputs?

Answer 22

Inputs: Spinal cord, sensory system or cerebral cortex
Outputs: Spinal cord or to motor systems in the cerebral cortex

Question 23

What is the time course of automatic motor response movement learning?

Answer 23

• early on: cerebellum, visual cortex, and motor cortex may work together to coordinate the timing and sequencing of motor movements
• after extensive practice, the basal ganglia may begin to initiate and control more-automatic sequences of leg movements

Question 24

What is Parkinson’s diseases’ cause? What are treatment methods?

Answer 24

Cause: reduction in the number of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) that control activity in the basal ganglia→ Neurons in SNc normally determine the levels of dopamine in the basal ganglia, and when these neurons are gone, dopamine levels are greatly reduced
Treatment methods
o Deep brain stimulation- A procedure that delivers an electrical current into a patient’s brain through one or more implanted electrodes; used to alleviate tremors and other motor symptoms associated with Parkinson’s disease.
o Drug therapies to counteract the reduced levels of dopamine