W6 - Stage of Skill Acq & Individual Differences

Question 1

What is the differential method?

Answer 1

focuses on the ways in which we are different from one another

Question 2

How is it different to the experimental method?

Answer 2

focues on the effects of certain variables on the motor behavior of people in general

Question 3

What is an ability?

Answer 3

Are inherited traits, are stableand enduring, number perhaps 50 and underly many different skills. They can also set a limit on performance.

Question 4

What is a skill?

Answer 4

Are developed and modified by practices. Are countless in number and often depend on several abilitties.

Question 5

What is a prediction?

Answer 5

an expected outcome based on some measure of your ability, for example accident prediction based on your age and gender. Also used in talent ID

Question 6

What is repeatability?

Answer 6

repeatability - a measured characteristic that reveals how stable and enduring a difference is between two people. Body weight for example has good repeatbility as a measure. Generally one person is heavier (or lighter) than another. The scores that tw beginners achieve when bowling a bowling ball would not be as the difference would largely be down to chance.

Question 7

When evaluating the differences in skill between two people what 3 things need to be assessed?

Answer 7

Are the differences generally stable from attempt to attempt. Do they endure across time.
and differences on a single measurement are often not sufficient to establish individual differences.

Question 8

Define general motor ability

Answer 8

Someone who possesses a strong (or weak) general capability for skilled motor performance. Assume that a relatively large number of people are tested on each of two skills, A and B. Henry reasoned that if one person was an outstanding performer on skill A, then this person would be assumed to have a strong general motor ability. If so, this person should also score well on task B, which also depended on general motor ability. Conversely, if another person did not score well on skill A, at least part of the reason would be that this person had a weak general motor ability, and this person would be expected to score relatively poorly on skill B also. In this way, skill A and skill B are related to each other i.e. that they have a correlation coefficient (r) close to +1. If the correlation between two tests is large in value (e.g., ±.80), we conclude that there is at least one ability that underlies both tests

Question 9

Define motor educability

Answer 9

the general capability to learn athletic skills

Question 10

What is Henry’s specificity hypothesis?

Answer 10

Correlations computed among different skills are generally very low. Even skills that appear to be quite similar usually correlate poorly.

This overall lack of correlation among skills argues against the concept of a general motor ability.
On the other hand, two skills with only minor differences (e.g., throwing 10 m for accuracy and throwing 15 m for accuracy) can correlate strongly.
The data tell us that there are many abilities and not simply a single general motor ability. In a study of 50 tests in the Armed Services Testing Program (Fleishman & Parker, 1962), the correlations among tasks were generally less than .50 unless the tests were practically identical to each other.

Question 11

General motor ability simply does not exist. However, scientists have argued that there are many abilities, each with a relatively narrow group of tasks that it supports. Identify 3 (out of 6) motor abilities and how physical proficiency is different.

Answer 11

1. Reaction time - responding to a single/ simple stimulus eg starting gun. 2. Response orientation - ability to choose from a number of alternative movements, eg batting in baseball, where the nature of the pitch and thus the bat positioning are uncertain (choice reaction time). 3. Response integration. Involved in tasks in which many sources of sensory information must be integrated to make an effective response. An example is playing quarterback in American football. 4. movement time), which measures the time of a movement produced without an initiating stimulus (i.e., not including reaction time). 5. Finger dexterity eg threading a needle. 6. Manual dexterity. Underlies tasks in which relatively large objects are manipulated with the hands and arms. An example is dribbling a basketball.

Physical proficiency abilities. Fleishman (1964) also identified 9 abilities that do not have so much to do with skills such as dynamic strength, explosive strength, gross body coordination, and stamina (cardiovascular endurance), have been identified i.e. physical fitness. There are probably many others:

Question 12

What does superability mean?

Answer 12

There may be a very weak general factor underlying most movement skills, giving a slight advantage to those individuals with such a strong ability. Be careful, though, because this argument in no way makes correct the earlier notion that all movement capabilities are based on a single general motor ability.

Question 13

How are skills and ability related?

Answer 13

1. Any given skill has contributions from several of the fundamental motor abilities.
2. Some of the abilities underlying a skill play very dominant roles, whereas others have relatively weak roles.
3. Two different skills will have different patterns of underlying abilities. 4. Two different skills can have a few abilities in common.

Question 14

What are the benefits and downside of using ability as a basis for skill classification?

Answer 14

they allow instructors to orient instruction and practice methods to particular task requirements, thereby facilitating performance and speeding up learning. For example knowing that a task has a strong cognitive component or has a particular emphasis on kinesthetic feel could influence the ways you instruct the learner during practice. Using experts to help do can sometime produce invalid response - often, very highly proficient performers do not know how they do what they do.

Question 15

What are 3 things that need to be considered when trying to make predictions based on ability?

Answer 15

attempts at prediction involve these components: Understanding the abilities that underlie the criterion task
Estimating the strength of these abilities in applicants as indications of their future capabilities in the criterion task
Estimating (or predicting) the potential (i.e., future) skill level on the criterion task based on present information about the applicants. Made more difficult because skill improves with practice, with practice produced changes in the relative contributions of the various abilities – not changes in the abilities themselves. The difficulty is that, although an individual might have the proper abilities for novice performance, this often is not the proper pattern of abilities required for expert performance. Skill prediction is not that accurate anyway, particularly in athletics where there has been relatively little research

Question 16

Provide 3 reasons why skill prediction isn’t generally that accurate

Answer 16

The underlying abilities in motor performances have not been studied systematically and are not well understood.
The number of such underlying abilities is probably large, requiring that many abilities be measured.
The pattern of relevant abilities shifts with practice and experience, making prediction of expert performances difficult.

Question 17

What is the relative age effect?

Answer 17

players who are born early in a given year are “relatively older” than the players born late in that year, even though, by traditional methods, they may be the “same age“. In a way, this argument goes against the idea that champion players are born with the “right” abilities; rather, this argument suggests that those players who were “lucky enough” to be born early in the year have an advantage over their late-in-the-year counterpart

Question 18

What is the Mountain of Development & how does it relate to motor skill progress?

Answer 18

Motor skills are learnt and practised over a lifetime. Clarke & Metcalfe (2002) developed model of motor skill development over a person’s life span, which they called the Mountain of Development. It has 5 periods, describing motor skill development from birth to death. Reflexive (as newborns adjusts to sensory changes eg bright lights and sounds) birth to 2 weeks > Preadapted - roll over, sit, pull to stand, creeps, walks - 2wks to 1 year > Fundamental Motor Patterns (Movement experiences during early childhood are critical to the development of fundamental motor skills) running, jumping etc - 1 yr to 7 yrs > Context Specific Motor Skills - 7 yrs to 11 yrs > Skillfulness - 11 years +. There are many peaks of varying heights depending on the person’s skillfulness in particular activities, and as well as moving up the mountain a person can come down it through injury and/ or ageing

Question 19

What are the 3 stages of Motor Learning according to Fitt’s & Posner?

Answer 19

1. Cognitive stage (Beginner) learner engages in a lot of cog. activity, makes many errors but greatest improvements. Practitioner can assist by helping the performer understand thw movement pattern, via demo, verbal instruction & modelling 2. Associative Stage (Intermeidiate) - where learner starts to get it, transitioning from learning how to solve the movement problem to refining it - more consistent, less errors, less cog. Practitioner can assist by facilitating error detection and correction 3. Autonomous (Advanced) - very consistent, few errors, largely automatically. Practitioner can help byhelping learner refine and maintaing their performance, and motivating them

Question 20

What are the 3 stages of Motor Learning according to Bernstein?

Answer 20

This approach assumes that there is a degrees of freedom problem - the challenge of organizing a complex structure of joints and muscles to produce smooth, goal-oriented movement. 1. Freezing the limbs - helping beginners learn by simplifying the task (For example, it would be more effective to instruct unskilled soccer players to keep the ball in the air by hitting it with only one leg than to encourage them to control the ball in the air with both legs, chest, shoulder, and head) 2. Releasing the limbs - as the learner becomes more proficient at the movement, the practitioner can help by gradually releasing the constraints imposed on the degrees of freedom, increasing range of motion and speed of movement 3. Exploting the movement - At this point the performer is maximizing muscular efficiency through the use of the optimal number of degrees of freedom and is able to exploit environmental passive forces (i.e., gravity or inertia). Learners at this stage are considered experts. At this stage figure skaters can land impressive jumps. The main role of practitioners with learners in stage 3 is to design variable practice sessions that push them to continue extending their capabilities

Question 21

What is the against bernsteins theories?

Answer 21

Against - It was proposed that the order of the learning stages depends on the task goal and the constraints of the person. To examine how changing the constraints of the task affects the behaviors evident in the learning stages, researchers had participants practice maintaining balance on a moving platform. In contrast to what would be expected based on Bernsteins proposal, participants produced large ranges of motion at all joints and with practice, rather than increasing their joint motion, the participants decreased it. The learners were gradually freezing the degrees of freedom that were not essential for the task. They also decreased motion in some degrees of freedom, but not in others - looking for a new coordination mode, one that was more efficient and more stable. The main suggestion from these research studies is that there are many ways to solve a movement task. The most appropriate method for learning a new motor skill is determined by the interaction between the structural and functional constraints of the learner; the goals, equipment, and rules of the task; and the environmental constraints imposed on the learner.

Question 22

What are the 2 stages of Motor Learning according to Gentile?

Answer 22

1. Getting the idea of the movement stage - similar to Fitts and Posner’s cognitive stage of learning. During this stage the learner has two main goals: to understand the coordination required to perform the task and to determine the regulatory and nonregulatory conditions of the movement. For example Regulatory conditions for the game of basketball include the ball, the positions of opponents and teammates, and the position of the player relative to the basket. Regulatory conditions for a simple motor skill such as walking down the street include the surface of support (concrete, ice, gravel), other pedestrians, and objects along the path. It is perhaps even more important for a learner to ignore nonrelevant cues, which Gentile refers to as nonregulatory conditions for example the sounds of the fans screaming. Learners who are easily distracted, especially children, should frequently be redirected toward the regulatory conditions. Practitioners can assist not only by concisely teaching the learner how to perform the movement pattern, but also what relevant environmental stimuli they should focus on. 2. Fixation and Diversification Stage - refining the movement pattern (similar to associative stage) and maintaining consistent performance (similar to autonomous stage). Fixation - the learner must refine the movement and be able to reproduce it consistently (closed skills) Gentile suggested maintaining regulatory conditions during this stage, but as the learenr’s skill improves altering the non regulatory eg crowd noise, fatigue, motivation level. diversification stage in which skills are practiced in unpredictable environments. For open skills, the practitioner should vary both the regulatory and nonregulatory conditions

Question 23

How do the Motor Learning models of Fitts & Posner, Bernstein & Gentile link to Dynamic Systems Theory?

Answer 23

DST suggests that It is important to consider prior movement experiences before instructing a new motor skill. Prior movement experiences will strongly influence the coordination patterns that a learner adopts, for better or worse. For instance, a skilled tennis player who has never played racquetball will likely swing at the racquetball with very little snap of the wrist.

Question 24

Discuss the practical applications of these models

Answer 24

With initial instruction, the focus should be on the organization of the learner and then on the goal of the task. The practitioner should provide adequate instruction to get learners started performing the movement task, with the goal of allowing them to explore movement options while attempting to produce the basic coordination pattern. During this time, movement errors can be seen as positive. Once they can consistently produce a movement pattern, they can focus on adapting the movement pattern. This enables the learner to perform under various internal conditions (e.g., fatigue levels, motivation levels, the importance of the outcome) and external conditions (e.g., crowd noise; the position, angle, and distance of the movement; the positions of other players).