Motor Behavior Chapter 1

What is motor control?

-study of how the nervous system coordinates muscles and joints to produce purposeful movements

-looks at mechanisms that allow us to plan, initiate, execute, and regulate movement

-happening in the moment

What is motor learning?

-Study of how practice and experience lead to relatively permanent changes in ability to preform skilled movements

-Acquisition and retention of motor skills through practice, feedback, and adaption

-Changes overtime with practice 

Both motor control and motor learning involve?

-Nervous system’s role in controlling muscles

-Emphasize perception, cognition, and action 

-Work together to produce skilled movement 

Sensory feedback examples?

-Sight

-Hearing

-Body position sense

-Touch

-Balance and orientation 

What is sensation?

-Detecting raw stimuli

-Biological / physiological 

-Ex: hearing a sound

What is perception?

-Interpreting and making sense of stimuli

-Psychological / cognitive 

-Ex: recognizing the sound as your phone ringing 

What is mind body connection?

-Bidirectional relationship between the mind’s thoughts and emotions 

-The body’s physiological functioning 

What is cognition?

-The process involved in thinking, knowing, remembering, learning, and decision making 

What is psychophysics?

-The scientific study of how we detect, interpret, and respond to physical stimuli in our environment

What is skill?

-Quality of movement

What is ability?

-Capacity to preform skilled actions

What is talent?

-Genetic abelites

What is coordination?

-Specific patterning of body and limbs to the environment

What is psychomotor skill?

-Characteristics like precision, manual control, cognitive processing / decision making, and reaction time 

Imagine a motor action and explain it in the context of being a motor skill?

-Throwing a baseball

• Throwing a baseball involves controlling your arm, wrist, fingers, torso, and legs in a coordinated sequence 

• Emphasis on the movement- accuracy, speed, and efficiency of the throw

Imagine a motor action and explain it in the context of being a psychomotor skill?

-Throwing a baseball

• Throwing a baseball as a pitcher in a game requires judgment (which pitch to throw), timing (when to release the ball), and perception (adjusting based on the batter stance

• Emphasis on the integration of mind and body- cognition (thinking and strategizing) and motor control (movement)