Task 7 - Skill Learning Flashcards
Skill
an ability that can improve over time through practice
Perceptual-motor skills
learned movement patterns and perceptual abilities
F.e. driving a car, dancing, drinking out of a glass & recognizing someone playing out of tune
Cognitive skills
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
Skill memories are similar in many respects to episodic and semantic memories
(4 reasons)
- They are long lasting and improved by repeated experiences
- They can’t always be verbalized
- Belongs to nondeclarative memories
- 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
Closed skill
a skill that involves performing predefined movements that, ideally, never vary (such as gymnastics)
Open skills
a skill in which movements are made on the basis of predictions about changing demands of the environment (f.e. basketball)
Knowledge of results
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
Power law of practice
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
a simple mathematical function (called a power function)
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
Observational learning
the participant observing the film formed memories of the observed performance techniques that he later used to improve his own performance
frequent feedback vs. infrequent feedback
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
Massed practice
concentrated, continuous practice of a skill – generally produces better performance in the short term
Spaced practice
practice of a skill that is spread out over several sessions – often leads to better retention in the long run
Constant practice
practice involving a constrained set of material and skills
Variable practice
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
Explicit learning
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)
Implicit learning
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
Serial reaction time task
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
Motor programs (aka habits)
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
Fitts’s model of skill learning
1st. Cognitive stage
2nd. Associative stage
3rd. Autonomous stage
1st. Cognitive stage
Fitts’s model of skill learning
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
2nd. Associative stage
Fitts’s model of skill learning
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
3rd. Autonomous stage
Fitts’s model of skill learning
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
‘Criticism’ on the model
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
Talent
a person’s genetically endowed ability to perform a skill better than most
Rotary pursuit task
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
Transfer specificity
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
Identical elements theory
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
Learning set formation (or learning-to-learn)
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)
Skill decay
loss of a skill because of non-use
– if you don’t use it, you lose it
‘Forgetting arc’
Forgetting occurs quickly at first, then gets slower
–> just like learning
core elements of skill learning seem to depend in particular in THREE areas in the brain
- basal ganglia
- cerebral cortex
- cerebellum
Morris water maze
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
Mirror tracing
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
Mirror reading
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
Parkinson’s 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 – 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
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 – has become the most effective neurosurgical technique for treating Parkinson’s (scientists are still not sure why this works)
Basal Ganglia is involved in:
- Skill learning: both cognitive and perceptual-motor
- Initiating & maintaining movements → control and velocity, direction & amplitude of movement (due to output to the thalamus)
- Necessary to forming new skills & accessing skill memories
- Forming motor programs
- Usage of environmental cues (input from the sensory cortex)
- Linking sensory events to responses
- –Basal ganglia overtakes the majority of the latent stage of learning
