Lecture 15: Skill memory

Question 1

Skill/motor/procedural memory is a type of ____ memory

Answer 1

nondeclarative

Question 2

____ is an ability that can improve over time through practice

Answer 2

skill

Question 3

____ is a person who performs a skill better than most

Answer 3

Expert

Question 4

____-____ ____ are learned movement patterns guided by sensory inputs

Answer 4

Perceptural-motor skill

Question 5

____ ____ is a skill that requires problem solving or the application of strategies

Answer 5

Cognitive skill

Question 6

Features of skill memories:
it is ____ to convey except by direct demonstration; it may be acquired (with/without) awareness; it also require several ____ to master.

Answer 6

difficult; without; repetitions

Question 7

Features of memories for events and facts:
it (can/cannot) be communicated in different formats; it has content that is ____ accessible; it can be aquired through ____ exposure

Answer 7

can; consciously; single

Question 8

____ ____ are commonly thought to depend more on intellectural prowess, but ____-____ ____ depend more on physical dexterity, speed, and strength

Answer 8

cognitive skills; perceptural-motor skills

Question 9

____ ____ is a skill that involves performing predefined movements that, ideally, never vary; ____ ____ is a skill which movements are made on the basis of predictions about changing demands of the environment

Answer 9

closed skill; open skill

Question 10

What is power law of practice?

Answer 10

“The degree to which each new practice session improves performance diminishes after a certain point, such that greater numbers of sessions are needed to further improve the skill”

= learning occurs quickly at first and then slows down

Question 11

What are the independent and dependent variables of a learning curve?

Answer 11

• Independent variable: # of trials
• Dependent variable: probability of salivation (learning index)

Question 12

What can be used to counteract the power law of practice, as in the example of kicking test?

Answer 12

Introducing new sources of feedback: After initial trial, rate of improvement in speed of kicking begun to slow. Then the participant was shown a film of optimum kicking, which helped him to improve his own kicking speed

Question 13

____ ____ is concentrated, continuous practice of a skill, while ____ ____ is the practice of a skill that is spread out over several sessions

Answer 13

massed practice; spaced practice

Question 14

____ practice improved performance more per hour of practice than ____ practice – However, although the group with ____ practice learned the task in fewer total hours, the training took longer.

Answer 14

spaced; massed; spaced

Question 15

____ ____ is practice involving a constrained set of materials and skills (like practicing a certain skill), while ____ ____ is practice involving the performance of skills in a wide variety of contexts (gradually increasing the difficulty)

Answer 15

Constant practice; variable practice

Question 16

____ ____ is learning that happens incidentally, without awareness of what has been learned.

Answer 16

Implicit learning

Question 17

Why did individuals with anterograde amnesia provide early evidence of implicit skill learning?

Answer 17

Because they can’t form new explicit memories but still improve on tasks like mirror tracing, showing learning without conscious recall.

Question 18

in the ____ ____ ____ task, participants learn to press one of four keys as soon as a visual cue (a light) indicates which key to press in either random or fixed sequence (not told to participants). This task tests the ____-____ skill.

Answer 18

serial reaction time; perceptual-motor skill

Question 19

In the serial reaction time task, participants’ reaction times are slower when cues are presented in ____ order. Quicker reaction times for the ____ sequence indicates that participants ____ learned to anticipate which key they needed to press next, even though their verbal reports reveal no awareness that there was a fixed sequence.

Answer 19

random; fixed; implicitly

Question 20

____ ____ are perceptual-motor skills that an organism can perform with minimal attention

Answer 20

motor programs (habits)

Question 21

Paul Fitts proposed that skill learning usually progresses through 3 stages: What are they?

Answer 21

Cognitive stage, associative stage, autonomous stage

Question 22

Paul Fitts skill learning model:
In ____ stage, an individual must actively think to encode and perform a skill. Next, in the ____ stage, learners begin to use stereotyped actions in performing a skill and rely less on actively recalled memories of rules. Finally, in the ____ stage, a skill or subcomponents of the skill become motor programs.

Answer 22

cognitive; associative; autonomous

Question 23

People who seem to master a skill with little effort are often described as having a ____ of the skill.

Answer 23

Talent

Question 24

Researchers frequently use the ____ ____ ____ in lab studies of perceptual-motor skill learning, in which a person gradually learns to keep a stylus above a particular point on a rotating disk

Answer 24

rotary pursuit task

Question 25

In the ____ ____ ____, correlations between the performances of ____ twins increased with training, but the same correlation decreased in ____ twins after training. These findings suggest that practice ____ the effects of previous experience on motor performance and increases the effects of ____ influences

Answer 25

rotary pursuit task; identical; fraternal; decreases; genetic

Question 26

Skill memories are often highly restricted and limited to that specific context. However, in the phenomenon of ____ __ ____, skills seem to transfer to novel situations -- like writing with your non-dominant hand or even your mouth or foot

Answer 26

transfer of training

Question 27

____ ____ is the restricted applicability of some learned skills to specific situations.

Answer 27

Transfer specificity

Question 28

In the ____ ____ ____, Thorndike proposed that the transfer of learned abilities to novel situations depends on the number of ____ in the new situation that are ____ to those in when the skills were encoded

Answer 28

identical elements theory; elements; identical

Question 29

____ ____ ____ is defined as acquiring the ability to learn novel tasks rapidly based on frequent experiences with similar tasks

Answer 29

learning set formation

Question 30

The persistence of a skill depends on: 1. The ____ of the skill 2. How well the skill memory was ____ in the first place 3. How ____ the skill has subsequently been performed 4. The conditions in which ____ is attempted

Answer 30

1. complexity 2. encoded 3. often 4. recall

Question 31

____ ____ is the loss of a skill through non-use (related to ____ forgetting)

Answer 31

skill decay; passive

Question 32

Skill-memory systems in the brain include the ____ ____, ____ ____, and ____ -- these three regions modulate the control of movements by circuits in the ____ and ____ ____

Answer 32

basal ganglia; cerebral cortex; cerebellum; brainstem; spinal cord

Question 33

Where does L5 of primary sensory cortex give out its feedback?

Answer 33

striatum

Question 34

Many of cortical inputs are initially processed by the ____ ____, a subregion of the ____ ____ that plays an important role in learning (__ --> __) association in operant conditioning, and it's particularly important for controlling where the body moves and the preparation before moving.

Answer 34

dorsal striatum; basal ganglia; SD-->R

Question 35

Control rats in a maze learn that there are food in each arm and avoids revisiting arms they have already visited. Rats with ____ ____ damage can still perform this task, but damage to ____ (similar to patient H.M) drastically impairs the ability to learn this task.

Answer 35

basal ganglia; hippocampus

Question 36

Control rats in a maze learn that there are food in each arm and avoids revisiting arms they have already visited. When the maze added a perceptual-motor association component to the test (such as rats must enter only the arms illuminated with a light), rats with ____ damage also learn this association, but those with damaged ____ ____ have drastically impared ability to learn this association.

Answer 36

hippocampus; basal ganglia

Question 37

3 steps of decision making in deliberation 1. determine potential ____ (requires a schema of how the world works -- for Tolman this was the ____ ____) 2. evaluate the likely ____ of those actions 3. evaluate the ____ of imagined futures and make a choice

Answer 37

1. possibilities; cognitive map 2. outcomes 3. value

Question 38

In a multiple T-maze, rats can take several choices and self correct in the early ones, but will be ____ if they turned to the wrong side on the final turn.

Answer 38

punished

Question 39

The multiple T-maze was changed everyday so rats learned new paths each day. Early trials require ____, whereas later trials become ____.

Answer 39

Deliberation; habitual

Question 40

Deliberation... - Occur more for ____ choices and ____ chocies, and occur less when actions become ____

Answer 40

difficult; important; habitual

Question 41

The ____ ____ ____ ____ (VTE) primarily occurs at final choices point, but not at earlier ones. It ____ as the rat's behavior becomes habitual.

Answer 41

Vicarious trial and error; decreases

Question 42

____ ____ ____ is the process by which one imagines another time and space. This process is related to step __ of deliberation.

Answer 42

mental time travel; 2 (evaluate likely outcomes -- require information/knowledge of past)

Question 43

____ ____ ____ is when imagining possible future events activates similar representational systems to remembering past events, and how well one can do this is related to the condition of ____ memory of the individual. Damage to ____ impairs both of these processes.

Answer 43

episodic future thinking; episodic; hippocampus

Question 44

When passing through sequence of place fields, rats experience high ACh level (), whereas when they are resting they have low ACh level ()

Answer 44

encoding; consolidation

Question 45

____ is the replay of sequences from waking experience and have information repeatedly sent to cortex

Answer 45

consolidation

Question 46

During ____ ____ ____ ____, rats at the turn may seem to be in ____, but their neural activity toggles between two different possible options and the respective ____ ____ of different routes light up back and forth. Once the behavior becomes ____, this neural look-ahead activity ceases.

Answer 46

vicarious trial and error (VTE); deliberation; place cells; habitual

Question 47

single neuron recording in the ____ ____ during a perceptual-motor skill learning trial found that early in training, most neurons fired strongly when the rats ____ which direction to turn, but later in training neurons shifted to code the ____ and ____ of each trial. This demonstrates how the structure undergon changes as a function of ____ of a perceptual-motor skill

Answer 47

basal ganglia; chose/decided; beginning; end; learning

Question 48

In the late stages of a perceptual-motor skill learning trial, ____ ____ activity at the begining of the trial initiates a ____ ____ that runs to completion potentially without any conscious control (=____ stage in Fitts' learning model), and its activity at the end of the trial can serve as an ____ correction signal.

Answer 48

basal ganglia; motor plan; autonomous; error

Question 49

Reorganization of ____ ____ areas responsible for executing the skills occurs following semantic skill learning -- much like the reorganization of ____ cortex that resulted from discrimination training. This expansion also follows a ____ ____, where early trainings prompt rapid activation/improvement but more gradually in later sessions.

Answer 49

motor cortical; auditory; learning curve

Question 50

____ ____ is an experimental task that requires individuals to trace drawings by watching a mirror image of their hand and tof the figure to be traced, with the actual hand and figure concealed. Learning of this task is disrupted by ____ lesions, but it doesn't affect the ____ of learning.

Answer 50

mirror tracing; cerebellar; rate