Principles of Practice Design, Practice Schedules, Diagnosing Errors, Correcting Errors

Part and Whole Practice Methods

• Part practice method: Breaking down a skill into its natural parts or segments. Characterized by low organization and high complexity.
• Whole practice method: Practicing the skill in its entirety. Characterized by high organization and low complexity.

Types of Segmentation (Part Practice Technique)

1. Segmentation: Skill is separated into parts according to spatial or temporal elements.
2. Fractionalization: Skill components typically performed simultaneously are partitioned and practiced independently.
3. Simplification: Reduce the level of difficulty of the task.

Influential Features of Skill Assessment

• Task Complexity:
  • Number of sub-components that make up the skill.
  • Information processing demands.
  • More components = more attention, memory, & decision-making requirements = more complex tasks.
• Task Organization:
  • Degree to which the sub-components are interdependent.
  • How much the performance of each part depends on the part that precedes it.

Strategies to Implement Simplification (Part Practice Technique)

• Modify equipment.
• Reduce coordination requirements.
• Change the environment’s complexity.
• Use skill-building activities and lead-up games.
• Sequence from simple to complex.

Chaining Techniques

• Forward chaining: Teaching a sequence beginning with the first step.
• Backward chaining: Teaching a sequence beginning with the last step.

Additional Terms

• Fractionation: Skill components performed simultaneously are partitioned and practiced independently.
• Simplification: Reducing the level of difficulty of the task.
• Speed-accuracy tradeoff: An emphasis on speed negatively affects accuracy and vice versa.
• Imagery: Visualization or cognitive rehearsal of a movement in the absence of physical education.

Practice Schedules

• Variable practice: Variability in movement and context is a necessary ingredient for skill development.
• Contextual interference: Switching from one skill to another.
  • Blocked practice: Superior short-term performance during practice; low contextual interference.
  • Random practice: Greater long-term gains; high contextual interference.
  • Serial practice: A combination of practices.
  • Repeated blocked practice: A combination of practices.
• Massed practice: The amount of time allocated to rest between practice sessions is comparatively less than the time spent engaged in practice.
• Distributed practice: Rest component between practice sessions is equal to or greater than the practice component.

Constant vs. Variable Practice Contexts

• Open Skills:
  • Regulatory conditions: Manipulate
  • Non-regulatory conditions: Manipulate
• Closed Skills (No inter-trial variability):
  • Regulatory conditions: Constant
  • Non-regulatory conditions: Manipulate
• Closed Skills (with inter-trial variability):
  • Regulatory conditions: Manipulate
  • Non-regulatory conditions: Manipulate

Stage of Learning and Practice Type

• Constant practice: During initial stages of learning and when developing an understanding of the task.
• Variable practice: After the learner has acquired basic movement patterns.

Massed vs. Distributed Practice

• Distributed Practices:
  • Recommended for:
    • New and complex skills
    • Continuous tasks
    • Tasks with high energy requirements
    • Tasks with some degree of risk
    • Skills practiced in a therapy setting
    • Learners who lack needed physical conditioning
• Massed Practices:
  • Effective in learners who:
    • Have acquired basic skills
    • Are motivated
    • Are in good physical condition
    • Have long attention spans
  • Can enhance physical conditioning/performance in game settings.
  • Avoid practicing when highly fatigued.

Diagnosing Errors

Errors due to Constraints:

• Developmental level: (e.g., hoop is too high).
• Equipment: (e.g., heavy bat).
• Structure of the task: (e.g., open vs. closed).
• Changes in the environment: (e.g., open vs closed)
• Fear: (e.g., fear of heights, fear of re-injury, etc.).

Comprehension Errors:

• When the learner doesn't understand the requirement of the skill or what is expected.
• When the learner is trying to correct or refine skills.

Telegraphing:

• Unintentionally alerting an opponent to one's immediate situation or intentions.
  • May not fully understand cause of error
  • Film performance
  • Provide feedback
  • Manual guide
  • Simulations

Response Selection Errors:

• Perceptual errors: Unable to identify cues = movement error
• Decision-making errors: Paying attention to task-irrelevant stimuli.
• Recall errors: A common cause of movement error is forgetting.

Execution Errors:

• Neuromuscular coordination: Inadequate practice time to establish neuromuscular coordination, learner does not possess the underlying abilities, attends to movement components that are performed automatically.
• Speed-accuracy tradeoff: Movement patterns will not be performed accurately because of the speed of movement.

Sensory Errors:

• Visual : Seen with your eyes
• Proprioception: How you perceive something

Feedback

• Intrinsic feedback: Response-produced Feedback that is available to learners through their sensory systems (vision, hearing, proprioception, touch,etc)
• Augmented feedback: Information received from an external source that supplements a learner’s own sensory information
  • Terminal feedback: Augmented information that is presented to the learner after the movement is completed
  • Concurrent Feedback: Augmented feedback provided during the execution of a skill
  • Faded feedback: high frequency of feedback in the initial stages of learning. Once learners achieve a basic proficiency level, augmented feedback is gradually withdrawn
  • Bandwidth feedback: a range of “correctness” is predetermined and augmented feedback is provided only on those trials where an error falls outside this range
  • Summary Feedback: the practitioner provides a summary of the performance after the learner has completed a certain number of trials
  • Average Feedback : The learner receives augmented feedback after the completion of a certain number of attempts (as in summary feedback) but the feedback is on the average performance error that occurred in the series

Correcting Errors

• Inter-trial interval : the time duration between consecutive trials or trials in a learning procedure
• Feedback-delay interval: the time that elapses between an action or performance and the delivery of feedback about that action.
• Post-feedback interval: feedback after the fact

Functions of Augmented Feedback:

1. Error vs correct feedback
2. Descriptive vs prescriptive feedback
3. Degree of precision in feedback

Video Replay for Visual Performance Feedback

• Video can capture performance attempts and store them for repeated viewing
• Learners must understand what to look for and how to interpret it
• Video feedback learning stages:
  • Shock
  • Error detection
  • Error correction
  • Independence

Descriptive vs Prescriptive Feedback

• Descriptive: Practitioner simply describes the nature of the error
• Prescriptive: Practitioner offers a suggestion of how to correct the error
• Which type to use depends on the skill level of the learner. (Descriptive better for advanced learners, prescriptive better for beginners) Descriptive is best for advanced, prescriptive is best for beginners.