Task 7 - Skill Learning

Question 1

Skill

Answer 1

an ability that can improve over time through practice

Question 2

Perceptual-motor skills

Answer 2

learned movement patterns and perceptual abilities

F.e. driving a car, dancing, drinking out of a glass & recognizing someone playing out of tune

Question 3

Cognitive skills

Answer 3

a skill that requires solving or the application of strategies (rather than to execute physical maneuvers or to sharpen your senses)
F.e. playing cards, budgeting money, taking tests, managing time

Question 4

Skill memories are similar in many respects to episodic and semantic memories
(4 reasons)

Answer 4

1. They are long lasting and improved by repeated experiences
2. They can’t always be verbalized
3. Belongs to nondeclarative memories
4. Often are implicit memories (since they are acquired and retrieved without the feelings of remembering associated with recalling episodic memories) – acquired without awareness – & require several repetitions

Question 5

Closed skill

Answer 5

a skill that involves performing predefined movements that, ideally, never vary (such as gymnastics)

Question 6

Open skills

Answer 6

a skill in which movements are made on the basis of predictions about changing demands of the environment (f.e. basketball)

Question 7

Knowledge of results

Answer 7

Feedback about performance of a skill; critical to the effectiveness of practice
– the extent to which practice can lead to further improvements decreases as the amount of practice increases

Question 8

Power law of practice

Answer 8

a law stating that the degree to which a practical 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 slow

Question 9

a simple mathematical function (called a power function)

Answer 9

to describe how rapidly individuals will acquire a skill; the number of additional practice trials necessary to improve a skill almost inevitably increases dramatically as the number of completed practice trials increases → power law of practice

Question 10

Observational learning

Answer 10

the participant observing the film formed memories of the observed performance techniques that he later used to improve his own performance

Question 11

frequent feedback vs. infrequent feedback

Answer 11

frequent feedback in simple perceptual-motor tasks leads to good performance in the short term but mediocre performance in the long term, whereas infrequent feedback leads to mediocre performance in the short term but better performance in the long term

Question 12

Massed practice

Answer 12

concentrated, continuous practice of a skill – generally produces better performance in the short term

Question 13

Spaced practice

Answer 13

practice of a skill that is spread out over several sessions – often leads to better retention in the long run

Question 14

Constant practice

Answer 14

practice involving a constrained set of material and skills

Question 15

Variable practice

Answer 15

practice involving the performance of skills in a wide variety of contexts
Variable practice can sometimes lead to slower progress than constant practice
– Gradual training often leads to better overall performance

Question 16

Explicit learning

Answer 16

a learning process that includes the ability to verbalize about the actions or events being learned – this creates explicit memories (typically involves memorizing a series of successive facts and thus makes heavy demands on working memory)

Question 17

Implicit learning

Answer 17

learning that occurs without the learner’s awareness of improvements in performance or, in the case of people with amnesia, awareness that practice has occurred

Question 18

Serial reaction time task

Answer 18

an experimental task (commonly used to study skill learning in people without brain damage) that requires individuals to press keys in specific sequences in the basis of cues provided by a computer; used to study implicit learning

Question 19

Motor programs (aka habits)

Answer 19

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

• They can be either inborn or learned
• One way to determine whether a skill has become a motor program is to interrupt the action sequence and observe the results

Question 20

Fitts’s model of skill learning

Answer 20

1st. Cognitive stage
2nd. Associative stage
3rd. Autonomous stage

Question 21

1st. Cognitive stage

Fitts’s model of skill learning

Answer 21

an individual must exert some effort to encode the skill on the basis of information gained through observation, instruction, and trial and error
– F.e. using written instructions to set up a tent

Question 22

2nd. Associative stage

Fitts’s model of skill learning

Answer 22

learners begin using stereotyped actions when performing a skill and rely less on actively recalled memories of rules
– F.e. setting up a tent in a fixed sequence, without instructions

Question 23

3rd. Autonomous stage

Fitts’s model of skill learning

Answer 23

in this stage, a skill or subcomponents of the skill become motor programs
– F.e. Setting up a tent while carrying on a discussion about politics

Question 24

‘Criticism’ on the model

Answer 24

the three-stage model of skill acquisition is primarily descriptive. It WON’T help you predict how much practice you need to convert your skill memories into motor programs or give you pointers about how and when you should practice

Question 25

Talent

Answer 25

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

Question 26

Rotary pursuit task

Answer 26

An experimental task that requires individuals to keep the end of a pointed stick (stylus) above a fixed point on a rotating disk; used to study perceptual-motor skill learning

Question 27

Transfer specificity

Answer 27

the restricted applicability of learned skills to specific situations – learning in one context and applying it to another, i.e. the capacity to apply acquired knowledge and skills to new situations

Question 28

Identical elements theory

Answer 28

provides one possible account of why transfer specificity occurs – 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 29

Learning set formation (or learning-to-learn)

Answer 29

acquiring the ability to learn novel tasks rapidly based on frequent experiences with similar tasks – the more experience you have it makes it easier to acquire new tasks (f.e. Badminton - if you have previous similar skill practice this might make it easier to acquire this then)

Question 30

Skill decay

Answer 30

loss of a skill because of non-use

– if you don’t use it, you lose it

Question 31

‘Forgetting arc’

Answer 31

Forgetting occurs quickly at first, then gets slower

–> just like learning

Question 32

core elements of skill learning seem to depend in particular in THREE areas in the brain

Answer 32

1. basal ganglia
2. cerebral cortex
3. cerebellum

Question 33

Morris water maze

Answer 33

Rats with hippocampal damage have severe difficulties learning this standard task but have no problem learning the task if the platform is visible at thesurface of the water. Rats with basal ganglia damage can learn to swim to the location of the platform whether it is visible or not. This seems to suggest that basal ganglia damage does not affect a rat’s ability to learn this task

Question 34

Mirror tracing

Answer 34

An experimental task that requires individuals to trace drawings by watching a mirror image of their hand and the figure to be traced, with the hand and figure concealed; used to test perceptual-motor skill learning

Question 35

Mirror reading

Answer 35

An experimental task that requires individuals to read mirror-reversed text; used to test cognitive skill learning
– Researchers found that cerebellar changes that occur during learning of the mirror-reading task are lateralized—that is, are different in each hemisphere, with the left cerebellum showing decreased activity and the right cerebellum showing increased activity with training

Question 36

Parkinson’s disease

Answer 36

• A disorder resulting from disruptions in the normal functioning of the basal ganglia and progressive deterioration of motor control and perceptual-motor skill learning – underactive basal ganglia (also included
• The main brain damage associated with Parkinson’s disease is a reduction in the number of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) that control activity in the basal ganglia

Question 37

Deep brain stimulation

Answer 37

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 – has become the most effective neurosurgical technique for treating Parkinson’s (scientists are still not sure why this works)

Question 38

Basal Ganglia is involved in:

Answer 38

1. Skill learning: both cognitive and perceptual-motor
2. Initiating & maintaining movements → control and velocity, direction & amplitude of movement (due to output to the thalamus)
3. Necessary to forming new skills & accessing skill memories
4. Forming motor programs
5. Usage of environmental cues (input from the sensory cortex)
6. Linking sensory events to responses
   - –Basal ganglia overtakes the majority of the latent stage of learning