Motor Learning 1-7 – Flashcards

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Theory Testing
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-Theory is a human made structure -Purpose is to explain how various phenomena occur -Hypotheses are formed from theories and tested in the lab -Theory doesn't survive if something predicted by it turns out not to be the case
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History of Motor Learning and Performance Research Before 1940s
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-Investigations of relatively complex, high level skills (e.g. telegraphy and typing) -Studies by biologist and physiologist concerning the fundamental mechanisms and muscle force production -Studies by biologist and physiologist concerning the study of nerves and the nervous system
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His of Motor Learning and Performance Research Dr. Franklin Henry
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-Experimental psychologist who worked in the physical education department at University of California Berkeley -Studied gross motor skills often involving the whole body, a new tradition of laboratory experimentation -Father of motor behavior research
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Skills
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-Involve achieving come well-defined environmental goal in these way: -Maximizing the certainty of goal achievement -Minimizing the physical and mental energy cost of performance -Minimizing the time used
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Three elements critical to almost any skill
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1. Perceiving the relevant environmental features 2. Deciding what to do and where and when to do it to achieve the goal 3. Producing organized muscular activity to generate movements that achieve the goal
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Open Skills
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-The environment is variable and unpredictable during actions (Team sports)
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Closed skills
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-The environment is stable and predictable (Drilling a hole in a block of wood)
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Discrete Skills
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-Usually have an easily defined beginning and end -Often with a very brief duration of movement -Throwing a ball, firing a rifle, or turning on a light switch
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Serial skills
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-A serial skill is a group of discrete skills strung together to make up a new, more complicated skilled action -Shirting dears in a car -The world serial implied that the order of the elements is usually critical for successful performance
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Continuous Skills
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-Have arbitrary beginning and end points, behavior flowing for minutes or hours -Swimming and knitting
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Error Scores in Discrete tasks
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-Computing an error score for given subject who was attempting a series of trails on a test requiring accuracy -The subject threw 5 darts -Various ways to compute an error score
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Constant Error (CE)
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-Average all the scores for each subject -Interpreted as an overall tendency to under throw or overthrow the target
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Absolute Error
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-Consider the absolute value of the error on each trial, and take the average of those error scores for the various trails -Interpreted as one person or group being more off target than another
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Variable Error
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-A measure of the subject's inconsistency -Computed by squaring the difference between each trial's error score and the subject's CE -Sum those over all of the trails and divide by the number of trials -Compute the square root of this value
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Error Scores in Continuous Taks
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-Continuous tasks, like tracking, are capable of producing many error scores on a single trail -RMSE represents two types of behaviors: the subjects bias tendency as well as inconsistency in the tracking behavior
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RMSE
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-Compute the distance of the subject's tracking response from target line at every set distance point along the track or at a constant interval of time along the track -The root mean square error score is computed by calculating the squared deviations for each measured position along the track, then taking the square root of the sum of those scores
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Conceptual Model of Motor Performance and Learning
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-An overall viewpoint -An information flow model, which considers how information of various kinds is used in producing and learning skilled action -Built on throughout the textbook
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Information processing Approach
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-Researchers have found it useful to think of the human being as a processor of information (like a computer). -A goal of researchers interested in the performance of motor skills is to understand the specific nature of the processes in the box labeled "the human" in figure 2.1
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Stages of information processing Information
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-There are three stages through which information must pass on the way from input to output -Stages are non overlapping (Processing in two different stages cannot occur at the same time)
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Actually Stages of information processing
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-Stimulus Identification stage -Response selection stage -Movement programing stage
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Stimulus identification stage
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-The system's problem is to decide whether a stimulus has been presented and, if so, what it is -It is primarily a sensory stage -The components of stimuli are thought to be assembled in this stage -Patterns of movement are detected
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Response selection stage
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-The system's problem is deciding what response to make, given the nature of the situation and environment -It is a transition process between sensory input and movement output
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Movement programming stage
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-The system's problem is organizing the motor system to make the desired movement -Before producing a movement, the system must ready the lower level mechanisms in the brain stem and spinal cord for action and retrieve and organize a motor program
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Reaction Time (RT)
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-It is an important performance measure indicating the speed and effectiveness of decision making -RT interval is a measure of the accumulated durations of the three stages of processing -Any factor that increases the duration of one or more of these stages will lengthen RT
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Number of Stimulus-Response alternatives
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-It is a factor that influences RT -RT is the time required to detect and recognize the stimulus and select and initiate the proper response -As the number of possible S-R alternatives increase, there is an increase in the time required to respond to any one of them -See Hick's Law
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Stimulus-Response Compatibility
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-It is the extent to which the stimulus and the response it evokes are connected in natural way -For a given number of S-R alternatives increasing S-R compatibility decreases choice RT -Practice can help overcome low S-R comparability
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Population Stereotypes
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-It is a type of stimulus-response compatibility -The association of the stimulus and response is likely learned in population stereotypes (Red for stop, green for go) -We sometimes act habitually due to specific cultural learning
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Anticipation
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-It is one way in which learners cope with long RT delays -A performer can organize movements in advance -Event, spatial, and temporal anticipation -Experts have a large advantage over novice in perceptual anticipation
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Benefits of Anticipation
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-A correct anticipation can result in the processing lag equivalent to RT = 0ms -It can start the action simultaneously with a signal or even before -One factor that affects the capability to predict effectively is the regularity of events
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Cost of anticipation
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-The primary disadvantage occurs when the anticipated action is not what actually happens -An incorrect anticipation will require more processing activities and longer delay compared to a response to a neutral or unanticipated event -It can create a biomechanical disadvantage
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Short-Term sensory store
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-It is responsible for storing vast amounts of sensory information only long enough for some of it to be abstracted and further processed
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Short-term memory
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-It is a temporary holding place for information (a phone number given to you verbally) -Unless we repeat the item, we know that this phone number will be lost from memory in a short time -Rehearsal is the process by which we keep from losing information from STM
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Long-Term memory
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-It contains very well-learned information that has been collected over a lifetime -A vast amount of information can be stored in LTM by processing in STM (required effort) -To say that someone has learned something means that information was processed in some way from STM to LTM
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Attention
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-Attention is a resource (or pool of slightly different resources) that is available and that can be used for various purposes -The ways in which attentional resources are allocated define how we use attention -A way to think of attention is related to the limitations in doing two things at the same time
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Attention and Understanding skilled performance
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-In many skills, there is an overwhelming amount of relevant and irrelevant information that could be processed -The performer's problem is how to cope with this potential overload -The performer must learn what to attend to and when to attend to it -Shift attention between the following: (Events in the environment, monitoring and correcting his or her own actions, planning future actions, and doing many other processes that compete for the limited resources of attentional capacity)
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Parallel Processing
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-Considering the processes occurring in the stimulus identification stage, some sensory information can be process in parallel and without much interference- that is, without attention -Different aspects of the visual display (Stroop effect) -Sensory signals from the muscles and joints associated with posture and locomotion -"cocktail party" effect
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Inattention blindness
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-We can mis seemingly obvious features in our environment when we are engaged in attentive visual search -A number of automobile accidents seem linked to the phenomenon (look but failed to see accidents)
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Sustained attention
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-After a period of time, the task of concentrating on a single target of out attention becomes a progressively more difficult chore -Factors known to affect vigilance include motivation, arousal fatigue, and environmental factors
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Controlled and automatic Processing
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-Controlled processing is thought to be slow, attention demanding, serially organized, and volitional as a large part of conscious information processing activities (Performing two information processing tasks together can completely disrupt both tasks) -Automatic processing is fast, not attention demanding, organized in parallel, and involuntary
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Developing automaticity
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-Automaticity is developed through lots of practice especially under a consistent mapping condition -Although very fast processing is effective when the environment is stable and predictable, it can lead to terrible errors when the environment changes the action at the last moment -It is most effective in closed skills
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Does distracted driving affect the response selection stage or the movement programming stage?
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-The assumption is that the hand operation of a cell phone interferes with the operation of a motor vehicle (movement programming limitation) -However, the source of the problem lies in the capacity demanded by the phone conversation
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Double stimulaiton paradigm
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-The subject is required to respond, with separate responses, to each of two stimuli presented very closely together in time -The delays in responding occur because of the interference that arises in programming the first and second movements as rapidly as possible
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Psychological refractory period
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-The motor system processes the first stimulus of two closely spaces stimuli and generates the first response -If the experimenter presents the second stimulus during the time the system is processing the first stimulus and its response, the onset of the second response can be delayed considerabl
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Time probe-task technique
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-A researcher would have the subject perform one task, called the primary task -At some strategic point the performance of the primary task, the researcher would probe the attention demanded in the main task by presenting a secondary task -Use the RT to the probe as a measure of the attention demanded by the primary task
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Focus of Attention during action
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-Internal focus of attention (monitoring the ongoing movement) -External focus of attention (A target such as an object to be struck or the intended affect that the action will have on the environment) -In almost all situations, an external focus results in more skilled performance than an internal focus of attention
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Inverted-U principle
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-Arousal is the level of excitement produced under stress -The inverted-U principle represents a view of the relationship between arousal and performance -Increasing the arousal level generally enhances performance, but only to a point
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Perceptual Narrowing
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-It is the tendency for the perceptual field to shrink under stress with high arousal -This is an important mechanism because it allows the person to devote more attention to those sources of stimuli that are immediately more likely and relevant
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Choking under pressure
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_occurs when performed change their normal routine or fail to adapt to a changing situation, resulting in failed performance -Attentional control theory -Change in attentional focus
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Exteroception
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-Provides information to the processing system about the state of the environment in which one's body exist -Inherent feedback -Information sources such as vision and audition
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Proprioception
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-provide information about the state of the body itself -Inherent feedback -Information sources such as vestibular apparatus, joint receptors, muscle spindles, golgi tendon organs, and cutaneous receptors -The central nervous system is thought to use a complex combination of the inputs from these various receptors as a basis for body awareness -Perception of movement's trajectory can be affected by how the movements if produced (actively or passively)
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Closed loop control systems
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-All closed loop control systems have four distinct parts: 1. An executive for decision making about errors 2. An effector system for carrying out the decisions 3. A comparator against which the anticipated feedback is compared to actual feedback to define an error 4. An error signal, which is the information acted on by the executive
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Limitations of Closed-Loop Control
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-The inclusion of the stages of information processing in the system illustrates the following: 1.The flexibility in movement control 2. A big disadvantage at the same time - they are slow especially when there is high demand for processing time, resources, or both, as in many complex actions
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Tracking task
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-The system can produce corrections at a maximum rate of about 3 per second -Each correction is based on a collection of information about the errors that have occurred over the past few hundred milliseconds and goes through the stages of information processing -Tracking with more than 3 changes in direction per second is performed poorly
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Rapid, Discrete Task
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-A feedback-based view of movement control fails to account adequately for movement production in very quick skills -Feedback arising from the rapid movement would not have enough time to be processed before the movement was completed, which led scientists to believe that most rapid movement must be programmed in advance
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Proprioceptive Close-Loop Control
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-Several reflex-like processes account for corrections leading toward goal achievement in a closed-loop manner without involving the information processing stages -In moving from M1, M2, triggered reactions, and M3 (or voluntary reaction time), these responses show systematically increase flexibility but decrease latency
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Two visual system
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-Two essentially separate visual system underlie human functioning -Visual information is delivered from the retina of the eye along two separate processing streams to different places in the brain -There is good evidence that these two different pathways of information are used differently in control of behavior
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Dorsal Stream Movement control
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-The dorsal stream is believed to be specialized for online movement control -Dorsal vision involves the entire visual field and operates non consciously -Optical flow provides numerous kids of information about movement through the environment, such as time to contact direction of movement of objects, and balance -Optical array is the collection of rays of light that are reflected from objects in the visual environment -Optical flow is the change in patterns of light rays from the environment as they flow over the retina during continuous movement of the eye through the environment, allowing perception of motion, position, and timing
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Ventral stream processing
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-Provides information about what in motor control -It is sensitive only to events in central vision -Ventral vision has access to consciousness, so it is processed through the information processing stage leading to action in much the same way as any other information source
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Audition and motor control
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-A delay in hearing auditory feedback can result in slowed speech and errors in timing and movements such as playing an instrument -Vision (even if incorrect) can override correct auditory information
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Open Loop Control
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-The basic open loop system consists of two parts: an executive and an effector -Without feedback, the open loop system is not sensitive to whether the actions generated in the environment were effective in meeting the goal -Modifications to action cannot be made while the action is in progress
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Motor programs as open loop systems
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-Open-loop control seems especially important when the environmental situation is predictable and table -Under these circumstances, human movements aper to be carried out without much possibility of, or need for, modification
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Evidence of reaction time
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-RT is affected by several features of the movement to be performed, presumably by influencing the complexity and duration of the movement programming stage
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RT increases when
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1. additional elements in are added to an action 2. More limbs must be coordinated 3. The duration of the movement becomes longer
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RT can be dramatically shortened under certain conditions
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-A loud acoustic signal usually produces the typical startle indicators -A prepared movement is also produced normally but with an RT that may be up to 100 ms shorter than on control trials without the extra startle stimulus
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Deafferentation experiements
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-A surgical technique that involves cutting an animal's afferent nerve bundle where it enters the cord -The central nervous system no longer can receive information from some portion of the periphery -These studies show that sensory information from the moving limb is not absolutely critical for movement production
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Central pattern generator
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-It is a centrally located control mechanism that produces mainly genetically defined actions -The concept of a central pattern generator is used to describe simple, genetically defines activities such as walking, whereas motor program theory applies to learned skills such as riding a bike
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Inhibiting actions
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-Considerable evidence suggests that a motor program is released that is responsible for initiating the action in tasks and serves to carry out the entire action unless a second stop signal program is initiated in time to arrest its completion -The stop signal paradigm is the method most frequently used for studying action inhibition
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Muscle response patterns
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-A limb's electrical muscle activity patterns are unaffected for 100 to 120ms when the limb is block by mechanical perturbation -These findings support the motor program idea that the movement activities are organized in advance and run off unmodified by sensory information for 100 to 120ms
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Motor and programs and the conceptual model
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-Motor programs are critical part of the conceptual model, operating in the system, sometimes in conjunction with feedback, to produce flexible skilled actions -The open loop part of these actions provides the organization, or pattern, that the feedback processes can later modify if necessary
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Major roles of open loop organizations
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-To define and issue that commands to musculature that determine when, how forcefully, and for how long muscles are to contract and which ones -To organize the many degrees of freedom of the muscles and joints into a single unit -To specify and initiate preliminary postural adjustments necessary to support the upcoming action -To modulate the many reflex pathways to ensure that the movement goal is achieved
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Integration of central and feedback control
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-The motor program is responsible for major events in the movement pattern -However, there is considerable interaction with sensory processes (e.g. the organization of various reflex processes to generate rapid corrections) -It makes the movement flexible in the face of changing environmental demands
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Problems in motor program theory
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-Storage: How (or where) do humans store the nearly countless number of motor programs needed for future use? -Novelty: How do performers produce truly novel behavior that cannot be represented in an already stored motor program?
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Generalized motor program theory
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-A GMP underlies a class of movements and is structured in memory with a rigidly defined temporal organization -GMP structure is characterized by its relative timing, a movement's deep, fundamental structure -Variations in movement time, movement amplitude, and the limb used represents the movement's surface structure
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Invariant features of a GMP
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-GMP structure is characterized by its relative timing, which can be measured by a set of ratios among the durations of various events in the movement -Relative timing represents a movement's deep, fundamental structure -Relative timing remains invariant, and relative timing structure is very difficult to alter
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Parameters added to the GMP
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-Relative timing may be carried out with different surface features (e.g. duration, amplitude) -Surface features are very easy to alter by parameter adjustment -Parameters change only how the GMP is expressed at any given time
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Classes of actions
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-Motor programs are thought to be generalized to account for a class of actions, such as throwing -Parameters must be supplied to define the way in which the pattern is to be executed (e.g. throwing either rapidly or slowly)
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Fitts' Law
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-States that MT is constant whenever the ratio of the movement amplitude (A) to target width (W) remains constant -In addition, Fitts found that the MT increased as the ratio of A to W increased by either making A larger, making W smaller, or both
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Linear speed - Accuracy trade off
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-The linear speed- accuracy trade off suggests that for various combination of movement amplitude and MT that have a constant ratio (a constant average velocity), the aiming errors are about the same -Increases in movement distance and decreases in MT can be traded off with each other to maintain movement accuracy in rapid tasks
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Sources of error in rapid movements
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-In summary, this is why increasing the speed of rapid movement contributes to its inaccuracy -In relative contraction forces of the various participating muscles are a major factor in determining the ultimate trajectory of the limb -The inconsistency in these forces increases with increased force -When MT decreases, more force is required -When amplitude increases, more force is required -More force generates more variability, which causes the movement to deviate from the intended trajectory, resulting in errors
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Very forceful movements
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-Here's what results when a movement requires very high levels of muscular contractions (greater than about 70% of the subject's capabilities) -Increasing speed by reducing MT can decrease spatial and timing error -Because a greater muscular force requirement increases accuracy, adding inertial load to the movement can decrease error, up to a point -An inverted-u relationship exist between spatial accuracy and force requirements, with least accuracy at moderate levels of force
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Movement timing
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-Skills with purely remporal goals seem to follow somewhat different principles than those having purely spatial goals -Decreasing the MT has the effect of decreasing the timing error for skills with temporal goals, making the movement more accurate in time, not less
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Bimanual aiming task
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-Bimanual Fitts' task -Both limbs could be assigned identical tasks with either low or high IDs, or the limbs could also be assigned to different (incongruent) tasks -The explanatory power of Fitts' Law is reduced when separate and incongruent task demands are required of two limbs -This finding could be a result of an attempt by the executive to deal with an overloaded attentional demand by issuing a single motor program that controls both limbs -Conclusion is supported by other bimanual research, and these findings support a view on which the MT and kinematics for both limbs are not determined independently but rather by a joint command
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Continuous Bimanual Timing
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-When controlling the continuous movement of two limbs, each with its own spatial or temporal goal (or both), because the movements are ongoing, the executive can do the following: 1.Use a common movement command to control the movements of both limbs 2. Switch attention rapidly between the executions of the two tasks
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Coordination as a self organization process
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-The notion of motor program is not without its critics -Investigators from the self organization perspective hold that the regularities of movement patterns are not represented in programs but rather emerge naturally out of the complex interactions among many degrees of freedom
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Speed accuracy trade off reconsidered
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-The increased complexity of coordinating two movements also provides more flexibility, such that increases in speed result in changes to the coordination pattern in order to maintain stability
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Experimental Methods
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-Experimental approach is a method of understanding behavior emphasizing common principles among people and through the use of experiments
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Differential methods
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-Differential approach is a method of understanding behavior by focusing on individual differences and abilities
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Ability
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-natural talent -Fundamental characteristic that tends to underlie particular skills; ability is largely inherited genetically and is not modifiable by practice
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Prediction
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-The process of using people's abilities to estimate their probable success in various occupations or sports
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Individual Differences Characteristics
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-Differences tend to be stable from attempt to attempt -Differences endure across time -Differences on a single measurement are often not sufficient for establishing individual differences
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General motor ability hypothesis
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-An outdated view, popular in the first half of the 20th century, held that all motor performances are based on a single ability called general motor ability -A person with strong general motor ability should be good at all motor tasks -Henry's and others' research tells us that the concept of a general motor ability is simply incorrect.
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Correlations among various skills
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-Generally, the relationships (measure by correlations) between various skills are low suggesting that there are many abilities which are very specific to particular tasks -Even skills that appear to be quite similar usually correlate poorly -Two skills with only minor differences (e.g. throwing 10 m for accuracy and throwing 15 m for accuracy) can correlate strongly
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Abilities and production of skills
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-Scientists have argues that there are many abilities, each with a relatively narrow group of tasks that it supports -There appear to be many motor abilities (perhaps 50 or so, when they are all discovered) that should be able to account for motor performance
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Abilities as a basis for skill classification
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-Effective classification allows the instructor to do the following 1. Ensure that the learning principles he or she is using are appropriate for the skill being taught 2.Give the learner more assistance with underlying features of skill important for movement control 3. Choose an individual for advanced training based on the match of abilities of the person involved in the task
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Prediction components
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-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 the potential skill on the criterion task based on present information about the applicants
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Patterns of abilities change with practice
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-Although an individual might have proper abilities for novice performance, this often is not the proper pattern of abilities required for expert performance -Selecting people because they are good as novices will capture only a part of the job of prediction -Most knowledge about abilities is based on relatively novice-level performances -Unfortunately, little is know about the abilities that underlie very high level performances, making the task of predicting them particularly difficult
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Patterns of abilities change with practice: Reference test
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-Researchers entered scores on reference tests, along with the results of discrimination RT test, into a factor analysis -Allowed them to measure how much the performance on the discrimination RT test could be explained by each of the abilities measured by the reference tests -Allowed them to determine how the relationship between task and the reference tests changed as a function of practice of the discrimination task
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Performances in early practice
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-This shift of abilities with practice and experience can be a problem if you attempt to select performers on the basis of their performance in early practice -Inviting a large group of youngsters to try out for a particular team or activity and after a relatively brief practice period, those performers most skilled at these activities are invited to remain on the team and the others are told that they will no be retained
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How effective is skill prediction?
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-Generally, not very effective in motor behavior -Underlying abilities in motor performances have not been studied systematically and are not well understood -The number of underlying abilities is probably large, requiring that many abilities be measured -Pattern of relevant abilities shifts with practice and experience, making prediction of expert performances difficult
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