Learning Motor Skills

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Learning Motor Skills

• Susan Anderson

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What is skilled motor performance?

• Examples
• Speaking
• Typing
• Playing the piano
• Walking
• Running
• Diving
• Swimming
• Handwriting

• Surfing
• Playing golf
• Playing tennis
• Serving
• Volleying
• Hitting a backhand
• Figure skating
• Playing basketball
• Skiing
• Snowboarding

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Definition of skill

• The capability of producing a performance result
  with maximum certainty, maximum fluency, minimum
  energy, or minimum time developed as a result of
  practice.

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Organization of Todays Talk

• Definitions and distinctions made by researchers
  studying motor skills and learning (i.e., a
  hodgepodge of concepts brought about by a
  hodgepodge of interesting skills)
• Factors of practice, what works and what doesnt

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Why Cant Shaq Shoot Free Throws?
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Classifying Motor Skills

• Variety of skills to study (i.e., flexibility of
  the human motor system) ?
• Ways to classify motor skills
• Open vs. closed
• Closed a skill performed in an environment that
  is predictable or stationary and that allows
  performer to plan movements in advance
• Examples gymnastics routines, figure skating,
  piano playing. . .
• Open a skill performed in an environment that is
  unpredictable or in motion or that requires
  individuals to adapt their movements in response
  to dynamic properties of the environment
• Examples surfing, basketball
• Gross vs. fine

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More Useful Definitions

• Target skills actual tasks needed to accomplish
  goals (keeping a tennis ball in play)
• Target behaviors component actions needed to
  perform target skills (watching the ball, keeping
  the wrist firm)
• Target context surrounding environment in which
  individuals want to be able to perform a skill (a
  highly competitive tournament on grass courts, a
  friendly game with your brother on clay courts)

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Measuring Performance and Learning

• Time
• Accuracy
• Artificial scoring system

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Biggest difficulty in measuring performance (and
learning)

• Variability
• Examples
• Batting a baseball
• Serving a tennis ball
• Playing a piano piece

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Movement Criteria for assessing human gait

• Criterion
• Minimal sway
• Arm opposition
• Minimal rise
• Cushioning
• Leg support
• Push-off

• Cues to watch for
• Body is over base of support
• Uses opposite arm and leg
• Makes smooth push-off
• Gives with the leg.
• Pushes down and backward.

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Explicit versus Implicit Knowledge

• Explicit awareness, ability to report, explain,
  articulate
• Example How to play a C major scale on the piano
• Implicit less/no awareness, ability to report,
  explain, articulate, but demonstrating skill or
  increase in skill
• Example Tying shoe laces?
• Many laboratory tasks
• Speaking natural language

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Stages of Learning

• Verbal-cognitive stage (declarative knowledge)
• Motor stage (organizing more effective patterns
  of movements to produce the action)
• Autonomous stage (able to produce movements
  almost automatically with little or no attention)

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Underestimated principle Specificity of Learning

• Thorndikes Theory of Identical Elements (1903)
  transfer depends on having shared elements in
  acquisition and transfer
• Modern theories (e.g., Andersons ACT-R) specify
  what those elements are (production rules)
• Failures of transfer can be downright depressing

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Underestimated principle Specificity of Learning

• Failure of transfer between writing and
  evaluating functions (computer programming) and
  essays (expository writing)
• Only partial transfer or reversed multiplication
  facts (e.g., 3 X 4 and 4 X 3)!
• Motor Examples Is there a general balancing
  ability or skill?
• Correlation in balancing on a seesaw and Bachman
  ladder is low
• Correlations between variety of perceptual-motor
  tasks are low
• Experts simple reaction times in lab tests do
  not differ from the average

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How are motor skills learned?

• PRACTICE!
• PRACTICE!
• MORE PRACTICE!
• World-class experts practice more and differently
  than those with less skill.
• Whats the right way to practice?

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Characteristics of Deliberate Practice

• Goal-directed
• Careful monitoring
• Problem solving
• Appropriate focus of attention
• Use of enhanced feedback whenever possible
• Use of variety of appropriate target behaviors
• Attempt to mimic target context as closely as
  possible (rather than maximize immediate
  performance)

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Example Aspiring Novice Pianist

• Always starts playing piece at the beginning.
• After making a mistake, stops, re-plays that
  particular spot with correct notes, and continues
  from there.
• Repeats over and over until target time of
  practice session is reached.

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Example Concert Pianist

• Decides to use conceptual memory to perform piece
  (for a recording).
• Analyzes the form of the piece for structural,
  conceptual cues.
• Designed practice sessions around particular
  goals fingering, phrasing, pedal, technical
  difficulties, emotional cues about 12 different
  dimensions in all.

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Practice How Long?

• Duration of effective daily practice is
  limited.
• It is necessary to maintain full attention
  during the duration of deliberate practice.
• Studies show no benefit for gt4 hours/day
• Reduced benefits from gt2 hours/day
• Biggest bang for the practice buck may be 1 hour
  per day

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Practice Distribution (within session)

• Massed practice leads to better immediate
  performance than blocked or distributed practice
• BUT, random or spaced practice leads to better
  long-term performance
• (Caveat May not hold for practice of a complex
  skill or at high skill levels)

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Practice Distribution (within session)
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Part Practice

• For complex skills
• Part practice (one piece at a time)
• Segmentation (first part learned, second part
  added and learned, etc.)
• Simplification (some difficulty is reduced)
• Is part practice beneficial?
• Generally, only when parts do not influence each
  other (i.e., each part is independent)

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Does Slow-Motion Practice Work?

• Research suggests that it can be hard to improve
  speed after working slowly on accuracy
• But sometimes it seems slo-mo is the only way to
  get started!

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Does Mental Rehearsal Work?

• Popular literature If you imagine something
  vividly, your brain doesnt know the difference
  between what you imagine and what actually
  happens.
• Truth Physical rehearsal is better than mental
  rehearsal, though mental rehearsal is almost
  always better than none.
• Useful in certain situations.
• May be more important as skill increases.

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Check Your Understanding

• A golfer wants to improve his score by 4 strokes.
  In particular, putting needs improvement.
• For each pair of skills, what identical elements
  might facilitate learning through transfer?
• White-water canoeing and snow skiing
• Water skiing and snow skiing
• Basketball and volleyball
• Handwriting and golf

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Check Your Understanding

• Give some advice to a tennis player looking to
  win more points off her serve.
• A basketball team chronically plays poorly in
  games but great in practice. The coach cant
  understand whats going on.
• The aforementioned golfer has been working on his
  putt for 6 weeks, but when playing games, his
  score hasnt dropped.

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Common Mistakes in Practice

• Not enough
• Lack of clear and appropriate goals
• Underestimate variability of performance
• Overestimate transfer of learning
• Practice for immediate improvement rather than
  long-term

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Why Cant Shaq Shoot Free Throws?