Challenge in Practice Week 4 M&L

What are the elements to the sport framework?

Specificity- same mixture, tasks and thinking time- representative learning design 

Progression- increases in skill practice load  

Overload- high levels of cognitive effort required  

Reversibility- use or lose it 

Tedium- monotony of the training programme 

Progression- Farrow and Robertson (2016)

What do Farrow and Robertson say happens to complexity overtime?

Complexity reduced progressively as repetitions increase  

• Frequency x complexity = practice load  

What do Farrow and Robertson say happens to overload overtime?

Overload- processing time before pass completion overloaded over 4 weeks 

• Overload ceases when progression flattens  

What do Farrow and Robinson say about Tedium?

Tedium-  

High tedium continuum= constant practice, low representative drills, simple cognitive effort and unskilled performer  

Low tedium continuum= differential practice, open ended environment, difficult cognitive effort, skilled performer 

What are the key points to Guadagnoli and Lindquist 2007?

• Practice performance is not necessarily indicative of learning as shown through the practice/retention paradox. 

• Relative difficulty of a task is dependent on both the complexity of the task and the level of the performer. 

• The level of the performer increases the challenge of the practice protocol should increase, thus maintaining relative task difficulty. 

What did Guadagnoli and Lindquist say about the challenge point framework?

Challenge point- learning cannot occur in absence of information   

• Learning will be slowed if there is too much or little information  

• Optimal amount of information that differs as functional of skill level and task difficulty 

What is nominal task difficulty? Guadagnoli and Lindquist

Nominal task difficulty reflects a constant task difficulty, regardless of who is performing the task and under what condition it is being performed  

• Includes factors like motor performance requirements and perceptual

What is functional task difficulty?Guadagnoli and Lindquist

Functional task difficulty- how challenging the task is relative to the skill level of individual performing the tasks and to the conditions that it is being performed under  

• Effected by external factors e.g. weather

What is task difficulty? Guadagnoli and Lindquist

Assumption- learning is the problem-solving process 

Sources of information before and after each effort are used to solve this method  

• Two key sources of information: movement action plan and feedback  

What are the types of information part of the challenge point framework?

Information  

• Potential information is related to nominal task difficulty  

• Interpretable information- relates to performers skill level 

What is optimal challenge point?

Optimal Challenge Point  

• Learning is directly related to interpretable information, related to functional difficulty of the task  

• Optimal amount of interpretable information for a performer known as optimal challenge point  

• Optimal challenge point represents the degree of functional task difficulty an individual of specific task level would need to optimize learning  

What is meant by challenge point?

Challenge point- point where there is an overload of information for the performer. Overwhelms their capacity and as a result, learning declines after the optimal challenge point 

What is action plan information?

Action planning information- tasks with differing skill levels of nominal difficulty, the advantage of random practice for learning will be largest for tasks and nominal difficulty  

• Individuals with differing skill levels, low levels of CI will be better for beginning skills levels and higher levels of CI will be better for more highly skilled individuals.  

What is feedback information?

Feedback Information-  

knowledge of results, high difficulty more frequent presentation of KR will yield largest learning effect  

Low nominal difficulty is with less frequent presentation of KR or both will yield largest learning effect  

What is Augmented information?

Augmented information- multiple sources of augmented information can be provided- the schedule of information will influence learning.  

• Low nominal difficulty, a random schedule of augmented feedback will facilitate learning as a compared with blocked presentation.  

• High nominal difficulty, blocked presentation will produce better learning than a random schedule.  

What is the challenge point theory?

Challenge Point Theory attempts to interpret the role of information in learning 

• Interpretable information 

Optimal amount of information for learning – Challenge Point 

• Information sources: Coaches need to be aware information sources that are available to the learner and ensure that they are not overloaded by them. 

What is representative learning design?

Representative Learning Design  

Based upon the ideas of Brunswick and linked to Ecological Dynamics ideas around a direct link between action and perception- in information processing referred to as specificity. 

• no processing stages the information in the environment is rich 

What did Pinder et al (2011) put forward?

Pinder et al (2011) put forward the idea of Representative Learning Design 

• Supports the idea of Games-Based approaches to coaching and context specific settings  

• Practice must simulate the performance environment 

What are the three ‘types’ of practice?

Practising to learn- forsaking short-term performance with the goal of long-term learning  

Practising to transfer- maintaining high levels of difficulty and specificity to facilitate transfer of acquired skills to competition 

Practising to maintain- reducing the difficulty to retain existing skills and growing athlete’s perceptions of their own competence 

How is optimal challenge point set?

The optimal challenge point is individually suited to the learner to challenge their current level of performance to maximize opportunities for learning. Challenge is conceived as opportunities for acquiring novel information in the practice environment  

• Whereby new information is viewed as the catalyst for change and ultimately improvement and learning.   

What are the three principles to the challenge point framework?

• New information is needed in practice for long-term improvements in the current level of skill. - learning is a problem-solving process where information is used to adapt behaviour and learn over the long term 

• Optimal level of difficulty or challenge is needed to get this information based on pre-existing capabilities. Not merely new information but useable that is needed. A learner’s information processing capabilities limits the amount of potential information that is interpretable. 

• Appropriate level of challenge is dependent on the athlete’s skill/experience and their information processing capacity relative to the demands of the task. 

What happens when challenge is low?

When challenge is low, performance is good. As challenge gradually increases, performance starts to drop off.  

• Challenge–performance relationship was conceptualized in a curvilinear function with slower decreases at first and more rapid decreases at high challenge. Shape of the function is dependent on both the type of skill and the type of challenge 

What happens when challenge is bad?

More challenge equals worse performance, and less challenge equals better performance.  

• When there is little to no challenge, then there is little to no learning, refer to as “comfortable” difficulty. Does not mean that there is no difficulty or even low difficulty, just low difficulty relative to the athlete’s current skills. 

Too much challenge is also bad for learning, what we refer to as “punishing” difficulty 

What is the Challenge Zone?

where learning is maximized is when performance has started to drop-off, termed “optimal” difficulty

What is the benefits of adjusting the difficulty in practice?

Adjusting the difficulty of practice, we find the optimal place at which learning will be greatest. In this new zone where learning can now take place because of the availability of new, unexpected information

What happens to challenge if difficulty isn’t changed?

Before and after this place, challenge with respect to learning is sub-optimal, not difficult enough so that no new learning is taking place, or too difficult and overwhelming in terms of the demands on the athlete such that it is difficult for learning to take place.  

What is the goal of the challenge point framework?

General goal of the challenge framework is helping people in motor skill acquisition to appreciate the role of difficulty in learning. If athletes are to do more than maintain their current level of skill, there is a need to get them out of their comfort area, where they know what to expect and how to respond and where there is little-to-no new information to be gained from practice.  

What happens with our expectations in practice?

When our expectations are violated, about how a movement will feel and look, the motor system detects such violations and uses them as a signal for learning. When our expectations are met, our internal models of the world are reinforced and no change is needed.  

How can challenge point framework be considered a meta-theoretical framework of motor learning?

Encompasses theoretical explanations for a broad range of practice effects; ranging from contextual interference to physical and feedback guidance, to distributed practice and self-directed learning benefits.  

• Aligns with a more global theory of skill acquisition applied to expert performance, that of deliberate practice (Ericsson et al). In the deliberate practice framework, acquisition of high-performance skill is thought to be a result of many hours of highly effortful and attention demanding practice, improve performance.

Why is learning not always the goal of practice?

Learning is not always the goal of practice; we consider the challenge framework to reinforce current skills and maintain current performance. - 

• Although three goals of learning, transfer and maintenance are rarely independent and should be thought of in terms of priorities, rather than decisions, the different goals are likely to have different implications for structuring practice. 

What is Representative Learning Design?

Framework for assessing the degree to which experimental or practice tasks simulate key aspects of specific performance environments 

• key premise being that when practice replicates the performance environment, skills are more likely to transfer 

Is RLD useful for coaches?

Currently no simple or quick method for coaches to assess the key concepts of RLD   

RLD has been proposed as a framework for coaches, researchers and sports scientists to assess which practice and experimental tasks are representative of the situation of interest (Pinder et al., Citation2011) 

What are the two key terms of RLD?

• Functionality refers to the degree an athlete can use the same information sources present during competition to contextualize their decisions and movements (Pinder et al., Citation2011) 

• Action fidelity was proposed to assess the degree an athlete’s movement behaviour during practice replicates movement performance during competition. 

What is the limitation for coaches using RLD?

Major limitation for coaches looking to enhance the RLD is an absence of readily available assessments to guide practice task design 

• RLD provides a framework for enhancing the representativeness of task design further work is required to enable coaches to better implement the concepts from within RLD in applied sport-specific settings 

What is Representative Practice Assessment Tool?

(RPAT), is expected to allow coaches to assess practice tasks based on key principles of RLD, so as to ultimately improve the quality of tennis skill development.

Why is it crucial for coaches to identify the emergent links between information (perceptions) and movement that occur in specific performance?

Athletes regulate their movements based on information from other players and/or moving objects

Preservation of these perception-action couplings is essential for athletes to develop and refine specific movement solutions that will directly transfer to competition performances 

What has remained a priority within motor skills for coaches?

To develop consistency within complex motor skills

methods to achieve this goal include; blocking practice repetitions, decomposing skills into their smaller constituent parts and using practice tasks devoid of competition-specific information

What has contemporary research shown about tasks?

Suggests a shift towards tasks that more closely resemble competition performance will encourage improved opportunities for skill transfer to competition (Rosalie & Müller) 

• provision of opportunities for active decision making and challenging an athlete’s emotional state through contextual changes, such as score and crowd noise