Task 7 skill learning Flashcards
Talent
A persons genetically endowed ability to perform a skill better than most
o The more practice people have, the more their performance depends on genetical factors
Cognitive skill
A skill that requires problem solving or the application of strategies rather than performing physical movements (can also become motor programs) (playing cards)
Perceptual-motor skills
Learned movement patterns guided by sensory inputs (more likely to be implicit learned) (drinking out of glass)
Closed skill
A skill that involves performing predefined movements that, ideally, never vary
Open skills
A skill in which movements are made on the basis of predictions about changing demands of the environment
Knowledge of result
Feedback about performance of a skill, critical to the effectiveness of practice
Power law of practice
A law stating that the degree to which a practice trail improves performance diminishes after a certain point, so that additional trails are needed to further improvement; learning occurs quickly at first, then slows
Observed learning
observing e.g. a movement and using the obtained knowledge to improve your skill
Massed practice
Concentrated continuous practice of a skill
Spaced practice
Practice of a skill that is spread out over several sessions (leads to better retention in the long run)
constant practice
Practise involving a constrained set of materials and skills
variable practice
Practice involving the performance of skills in a wide variety of context (takes longer but is mostly superior)
o Improvement is increases if difficulty is going to be increased
explicit learning
A learning process that includes the ability to verbalize about the actions or events being learned
Implicit learning
Learning that occurs without the learners awareness of improvements in performance or, in the case of people with amnesia, awareness that practice has occurred
Three stages of skill learning
o Cognitive stage: first stage in Fitts skill learning. In this stage, an individual must exert some effort to encode the skill on the basis of information gained through observation, instruction and trail and error
o Associative stage: second stage of fitts skill learning. Learners begin to use stereotyped actions when performing a skill and rely less on actively recalled memories of rules
o Autonomous stage: third stage of fitts skill learning. A skill or subcomponents of the skill become motor programs so you can perform them without effort, and you could talk next to it
Transfer specificity
The restricted applicability of learned skill to specific situations
Identical elements theory
Thorndike’s proposal that learned abilities transfer to novel situations to an extent that depends on the numbers of elements in the new situation that are identical to those in the situation in which the skill were encoded
Learning set formation
Acquisition of the ability to learn novel tasks rapidly based on frequent experiences with similar tasks
Skill decay
Loss of skill because of non-use (may be impossible to distinguish whether someone knows how to perform a skill but has impaired movement abilities or whether the person has forgotten how to perform the skill)
Overshadowing
• Skills can be overshadowed by a second learned directly after the first
Water rats experiment
One interpretation of this finding is that rats with basal ganglia damage have difficulty learning to swim toward a platform to escape the water (even when the platform is clearly visible) and instead learn to swim to a particular location in the tank to escape the water
Musician dystonia
extensive practice playing an instrument can lead to a reduction or loss of motor control, motor areas shrink or increase and s reorganize the somanotopic organisation
Parkinson disease
A disorder resulting from disruptions in the normal functioning of the basal ganglia and progressive deterioration of motor control and perceptual-motor skill learning.
o Parkinson’s disease may selectively disrupt circuits in the basal ganglia that contribute to the learning and performance of closed skills, especially those that have reached the autonomous stage of learning, where movements normally would be automatic
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, quites brain regions that are fixed on one communication
