Skill Acquisition Flashcards (3.1-3.3)

Flashcards for reviewing motor skills, skill acquisition, and biomechanics.

Skill

A skill is generally defined as the proficiency or ability to perform a particular task or activity well.

Motor Skill

A type of skill that involves controlled movement of the body

Subroutines

A set of instructions designed to perform a frequently used operation within a program.

Motor Program

A pre-structured sequence of muscle commands in the brain that allows for the execution of a specific movement without continuous sensory feedback

Fine Motor Skills

Involve greater precision in the control of small muscles such as writing, throwing a dart, hand movements in gymnastics routine.

Gross Motor Skills

Involve movements of large parts of the body or of the whole body, they also require less precision for example a somersault or kicking a soccer ball.

Discrete Motor Skills

Skills that have a distinct beginning and end point e.g. golf swing, kicking a soccer ball, throwing a ball, javelin.

Continuous Motor Skills

Motor skills that bring together in a movement sequence and usually are repetitive and do not have a clear beginning and end. e.g. swimming, running, rowing, cycling.

Serial Motor Skills

A number of discrete skills performed in a movement sequence. e.g. gymnastics routine, dribbling in basketball.

Open Skills

Skills are performed in an unpredictable environment (in which the object or context is changing) and they are externally paced.

Closed Skills

Skills are performed in highly predictable environments where the performer has full control of the timing of the movements. The performer can commence the action when they are ready.

Cognitive Stage (Understanding)

Identification and development of the component parts of the skill. You learn what is needed to perform the skill and the beginner invariably makes a large number of errors.

Associative Stage (Practice)

The practice stage where the performer becomes familiar with the sequencing and timing of the movement. Linking the component parts into a smooth action - involves practicing the skill and using feedback to perfect the skill.

Autonomous Stage (Automatic Reference)

Developing the learned skill so that it becomes automatic - involves little or no conscious thought or attention whilst performing the skill - not all performers reach this stage.

Massed Practice

Entails practicing a skill consistently and continuously without breaks until the skill has been learned.

Distributed Practice

Consists of short, frequent practice sessions interspersed with rest intervals or intervals of learning some other skill.

Whole Practice

Involves learning of the skill in it’s entirely.

Part Practice

Is the learning of skills broken down into parts or subroutines.

Blocked Practice

Involves the learning of one component of a multi-task skill in order to refine and improve that specific component.

Random Practice

Is the practice routine in which all components of a complex skill are practiced in random order within a single training session.

Fixed Practice

Is when the same movement skill is practiced over and over again, and the environment doesn’t change.

Variable Practice

Is used best for open skills and involves practicing skills in varying situations. This helps to build up schema to use in game situations (game sense approach).

Drill Practice

Involves learning through repetition (often seen as a traditional approach).

Problem Solving Practice

Involves learning through discovery and investigation and develops ‘intelligent performers’.

Schema Theory

actions are not stored, rather we refer to abstract relationships or rules about movement

Information Processing

Before you can perform a skilled movement, you must be able to take in information from the environment and attempt to make sense of it.

Sensory Input

Information received from the environment using vision, hearing, proprioception, equilibrium, touch, smell.

Stimulus Identification

Once the stimulus is received it has meaning attributed to it from memory; organises and interprets sensory information.

Response Selection

The identified stimulus is aligned to a decided upon course of action or movement.

Response Programming

The required motor program is retrieved from long -term memory and a planned, coordinated sequence of muscular contractions is initiated; organises, initiates and controls the chosen motor program.

Output

Movement that occurs as a result of the initiation of motor neurons.

Feedback

All the information a person receives about the performance of a skill.

Cues

Any piece of information received from the environment is called a cue or stimuli.

Noise

Irrelevant cues that are present in the environment, distracting players from more important cues such as player movement.

Selective Attention

A performer’s ability to block out irrelevant information and attend only to the relevant cues is referred to as.

Equilibrium (Balance)

The internal sense that tells you that your body is in balance and under control.

Proprioception (Kinesthesis and Touch)

Gives you an awareness of muscular movement and effort as well as the movement and positions of joints and tendons. This sense allows you to judge how a particular movement ‘feels’.

Anticipation

Allows the performer to predict what will happen next on the sporting field and is a product of experience.

Reaction Time

Is the amount of time between a stimulus and the first movement initiated in response to it.

Movement Time

Is the time taken to complete the task after it has been initiated.

Response Time

Is the addition of the reaction time plus the movement time. In other words, it is the time from the initial stimulus to the completion of the task.

Simple Reaction Time

When there is only one stimulus to react to and only one correct response. As a result of requiring only one specific response, simple reaction time is quicker.

Choice Reaction Time

The interval of time that elapses between the presentation of one of several possible stimuli and the beginning of one of several possible responses.

Hick’s Law

States that there is a relationship between the number of stimulus presented and reaction time.

Psychological Refractory Period

Is a successive presentation of cues. If a player presents a fake or a baulk, attempting to get their opponents to react to the movement, they are taking advantage of the psychological refractory period.

Stimulus – Response Compatibility

Is the degree of correspondence between a stimulus and its correct response.

Spatial (or event) anticipation

Anticipation can involve prediction about WHAT will happen in the environment.

Temporal Anticipation

Anticipation involves predicting WHEN an environmental event will occur.

Short Term Sensory Storage

Has the ability to receive much information, will retain it for a very brief time (1 second), and relay important information to the second storage which is termed short term memory.

Short Term Memory (STM)

Also has a limited capacity. It gives you the ability to recall information immediately after you have been exposed to it.

Chunking

Putting single pieces of data together into groups. We then remember the groups which contain more information than just the individual items.

Long Term Memory (LTM)

Exists for information which has been repeated or rehearsed.

Schema

Are rules which we learn in order to execute skills in differing environments.

Feedback

Is all information an athlete receives about the result or process of an activity either during the performance or at its completion.

Intrinsic Feedback

Includes kinaesthetic feedback. Sometimes called inherent feedback, it is the sensory information that arises as a natural consequence of producing a movement.

Extrinsic Feedback

Is information provided to the learner from an outside source, such as comments of an instructor, the digital display of a stopwatch, the score of a judge, the film of a game, the videotape replay of a movement etc.

Knowledge of Results (KR)

Is the feedback which provides information about the outcome of a performance rather than the movements that brought about the performance.

Knowledge of Performance (KP)

Is a form of extrinsic feedback (usually verbal) that indicates the technical correctness or quality of the movement. Thus it is the information about the movement pattern that the athlete has performed either correctly or incorrectly.

Continuous (or concurrent) Feedback

This is feedback which is provided from many sources during the execution of skills.

Terminal (or discrete or delayed) Feedback

This is the feedback that is provided after a skill has been performed.

Biomechanics

Is the science concerned with the internal and external forces acting on a human body or object and the effects produced by these forces e.g., the flight of a javelin or the spin of a ball.

Flexion

Movement at a joint resulting in the angle between the two bones decreasing.

Extension

Movement at a joint resulting in an increase in the angle between the two bones.

Abduction

Movement away from the midline of the body.

Adduction

Movement towards the midline of the body.

Kinematics

Is the area of biomechanics that studies the description of motion. This includes how fast, how far and how consistently a body moves.

Motion

Simply movement.

Linear Motion

The motion of a body in a straight line.

Angular Motion

Motion of all parts of the object move around a fixed point.

Axis of Rotation

The fixed point around which an object rotates. It can be internal or external

General Motion

The combination of linear and angular motion.

Projectile

A body that moves through the air e.g. human body (pole vault or long jump) or a tennis ball.

Kinetics

Is the area of biomechanics that studies influences on the movement of a body.

Mass

Is the amount of matter that makes up an object.

Force

Is the pushing or pulling effect of a body that can cause change.

Centre of Gravity

The centre of gravity of an object can be described as the centre of balance or centre of weight.

Base of Support

The area of the supporting base of an object is directly related to its stability.

Stability

Is the body’s ability to remain in a state of balance. Stability can be either static (stationary) or dynamic (moving).