Motor Skills

Motor Skills

Motor Skill

• Denotes an act or task that has a goal to achieve and that requires voluntary body and limb movement to be properly performed
• Acquisition of a motor skill is a process in which the learner develops a set of motor responses into an integrated and organized movement pattern
• Skill, unlike talent, is a consequence of training and practice

Ability

• A general enduring trait affected by learning and heredity (e.g balance)

Skill

• Specific to a given task and gained through experience
• Performing balance beam in a gymnastics, a skill that requires the ability to balance

Motor abilities

• Separate components that contribute to the way in which skill learning occurs
• Muscular strength, muscular endurance, cardiovascular endurance, speed, agility, balance, eye/hand-eye/foot coordination, control precision, multi-limb coordination, reaction time, manual dexterity, power

Characteristics of Skillful Motor Performance

1. Products of a fast output of high quality
2. An appearance of ease and smoothness of movement
3. An anticipation of variations in the stimulus situation before they arrive
4. Reduction in time to make a choice of responses once the signal is identified

Motor Skill Classification System

• Determines which components of a skill are common or similar to components of another skill
• For each classification system, consider each of the two categories as extreme ends of a continuum
• Most activities will be the extremes, containing elements of each

Gross vs. Fine

Discrete vs. Continuous

Closed vs. Open

Most commonly used in special education, adapted physical education and rehabilitation

Gross vs. Fine

• Based on precision of movement

Gross motor skills

• Involved large musculature as the primary basis of movement
  • Walking, throwing, jumping, most sport skills
• Precision of movement is not an important component, the smooth coordination of the movement is essential to the skilled performance of these tasks

Fine Motor skills

• Skills that required the ability to control small muscles of the body in order to achieve the successful execution of the skill
• Skills involve hand-eye coordination and require a high degree of precision of movement
  • Writing, drawing, piano playing, watch making

Physical therapist usually work with gross motor skills

Occupational therapists work on fine motor skills

Discrete vs. Continuous

Based on distinctiveness of beginning and end pints of the movement

Commonly used by motor learning researchers and in human engineering and human factors

Discrete motor skill

• Clearly defined beginning and end points
  • Throwing a ball, pushing in the clutch in a car, hitting a key on a computer
• Can be put together in a series (serial motor skills), starting a standard transmission automobile, a dance routine, shooting an arrow in archery

Continuous motor skill

• Has arbitrary beginning and end points
• The performer or some external force determines the beginning or end point of the skill rather than the skill itself
  • Steering a car, swimming, running, etc

Closed vs. Open

Based on stability of the environment in which the skill is performed

Commonly used in physical education

Closed Skills

• Performance environment is stable and predictable
  • Golf, bowling weightlifting and swimming
• Self-paced
• Stimulus waits to be acted on by the performer
• Requires similar responses each time a response is required

Open Skills

• The performance environment is constantly changing and is therefore much less predictable
  • Hitting a tennis ball, racquetball, baseball and team sports
• Externally paced task
• Performed is required to make rapid modifications in her plan of action to match the demands of the situation. Performer must act according to the action of the object or the characteristics of the environment

Fundamental Movement skills

• The foundational movements to the more specialized and complex skills used in play, dance and sport
  • Throwing, catching, jumping, striking, running, kicking
  • Agility, coordination and balance
• Phys ed teachers use their knowledge of fundamental movements to helping children develop their motor skills

Fundamental Movement skills training focuses on three categories

Physical Literacy

• The motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge and understanding to value and take responsibility for engagement in physical activities for life
• Ideally Fundamental movement skills and physical literacy are developed in childhood and maintained through life
  • Children who develop early motor competencies are more physically active during childhood
  • Active children and youth are more likely to stay active into adulthood
  • Top athletes are likely to have participated in more sports earlier and specialized later

Active for Life

• Development of fundamental movement skills at a young age, will help our population gain the confidence to move throughout their lives
• This will result in greater participation in physical activity and create broad health benefits for our population
  • Maintenance of physical literacy can contribute significantly to the prevention
    • Chronic disease risk
    • Mobility issues
    • Maintenance of activities of daily living
    • Psychological health
• To succeed, important of sport, recreation and physical education in public health needs to be recognized and supported
• Community-based approaches should play important roles in building and maintaining resilient individuals

Functional Health

• as a population is aging, they experience more declines in functional health, measured by physical literacy which reduced quality of life
  • Decreased functional health increase Health care costs and reduced the economic productivity of a population
• Increase functional health (durability) will increase the capacity of individuals to avoid poor health and recover more quickly

Stages of Skill Acquisition

1. Cognitive Stage
   1. Performer is attempting to form a mental plan of the performance that will govern their actions
   2. Errors are made frequently and tend to be large
   3. Performance is highly variable
2. Associative Stage
   1. Performer moves to this stage when he is able to reproduce a reasonable approximation of the desired movement
   2. The task of the performer is to refine the necessary movements required for the execution of the task
   3. Errors are no longer large
3. Autonomous stage
   1. Advanced performers are at this stage
   2. Movements that makes up the motor responses have automated and where, the appropriate, spare attention may be devoted to other tasks such as, for open skills, game strategy
   3. Result of a tremendous amount of practice
   4. Good degrees of similarity between higher practices skills and reflexes
   5. Variability of performance is small
   6. Small improvements in skill do continue in this stage

Continuum in motor learning

• Learners do not abrupt moves from one stage to the next

Motor Learning

Motor Learning

• A relatively permanent change in the performance levels of a motor task as a result of practice
• Sub-divided into 2 categories

Sensorimotor adaption

• Responds to altered environmental (or body) conditions by reducing errors to regain a previous level of performance
• Recover of function following neurological injury

Skill Learning

• Involved acquiring new muscle activation patterns to achieve a greater level of performance
• Learning to ride a bicycle or play tennis

Assessing Learning

Performance curves

• Plot of the level achieved on the performance measure across time
• Assess improvement and consistency of performance

Retention Tests

• An assessment on the performance of learned skill after a period of time following practice
  • Pre-post-retention test paradigm for clinical trails in rehabilitation
• Assess the persistence of improve performance

Transfer Tests

• Involve a novel situation so that the individual must adapt the skill to the characteristics of the new situation

Transfer of Learning

Transfer of learning is

• The influence of a previously practice skill on the learning of a new skill
  • Racquetball vs squash
• Important in teaching of motor skills
  • Teaching basic swimming strokes using dry land drills before trying in water
  • Using a pitching machine to teach hitting in baseball

Positive Transfer

• Occurs when experience with a previous sill aids or facilitates the learning of a new skill
  • Surfing > snowboarding
• Higher the degree of similarity, the greater the amount of positive transfer that can be expected between them

Negative transfer of Learning

• Occurs when experience with a previous skill interferes with the learning of a new skill
  • Forehand in tennis vs. badminton
• occurs when a new response is required for an old stimulus - different keyboard
• Generally be seen only in specific aspects of an activity
• Affects are typically temporary: usually over come quickly with practice

Zero transfer

• Experience with a previous skill has no influence on the learning of a new skill
  • Learning to swim and to drive a car

Bilateral transfer of learning

• Involved the improvement in performance from one lib as a result of practice with the opposite limb
• Important in motor skills like dribbling a basketball or kicking a soccer ball

Augmented Feedback

Augmented feedback

• Comes from someone or something external to the person
• Distinct from sensory feed back which comes from the learners own sensory system

Role of Augmented Feedback is to facilitate success of the motor skill

• Allows learner to determine if they're appropriately performing the skill
• Motivate the learner to continue to try to reach their goal
• Not all situation benefit from or require feedback

2 categories of augmented feedback

1. Knowledge of Results (KR)
   1. Info about the outcome of performing a skill or about achieving the goal of the performance
      1. Could refer to the results or could be a yes or no regarding if goal was achieved
2. Knowledge of Performance (KP)
   1. Information about the movement characteristics that led to the performance outcome
      1. can be verbal or by non-verbal means (video replay)

KR and KP differ in which aspect of performance the info refer to

E.g Physical therapist with patietn

KR = you walked 5m more than yesterday

KP = you should bend at your knees more as you walk

Benefits of KR

• To confirm own assessments of trask-intrinsic feedback
• When learner can't determine the outcome of performing skill
  • When result is not visible to learner
• To motivate
• When practitioners and coaches want learner to problem solve by making trial and error

Benefits of KP

• Motor skills require specific movement characteristics
  • Gymnastic stunts or figure skating jumps
• Highly coordinated movement components of a skill must be improved or corrected
• The goal (not necessarily movement) of the action is kinematic, kinetic or specific muscle activity not readily observable
• KR is redundant with task-intrinsic

What should the content of Augmented Feedback Relate To?

Research suggests:

• Providing error info Is more effective for facilitating skill learning than providing info on the correct aspect of performance
  • Easier to point out errors than describing the correct performance
• Qualitative information may be better to provide in the early stages of learning compared to quantitative info
  • Relates to the fact that it is easier to make a first approximation of the required movement at this stage
  • Quantitative info is likely better for a non-novice
• Erroneous feedback IS BAD
  • Learners will use it despite it being wrong

What information to give as KR/KP

• No more or less info about the performance should be provided than the learner is capable of handling
• Must provide information that will direct attention to the part of the skill that must be corrected and will enable the learner to make an appropriate correction
• Should not be given ever practice trial

Video tape can be a very effective method of giving KR and KP

• Skill level of the student is a critical factor- beginners need the aid of an instructor to point out information from the replay
• Meaningful information must be represented

Practice

Amount and Variety or Practice

Purpose of practicing a skill

• To learn to perform that skill in situations where you will in some way be tested

Practice conditions

• Should be establish in a way that will lead to max test performance

It is essential to have a variety of practice experiences

• Involving variations of the skill being learned so that a person can successfully perform the skill in a variety of performance situation

Open skills vs Close skills

• Increasing the variability within each practice session is preferred to practicing one variation during one session, another variation in another session, etc.
• Amount of practice affects the quality of learning although the effect is not always proportion
  • What form of instruction or practice will yield the greatest returns for the least expenditure of time
• Spacing or distribution of practice can affect both practice performance and learning

Mental practice

• The cognitive rehearsal of a physical skill in the absence of overt, physical practice. Involved imaging the actual correct performance. Involves imaging the actual correct performance of the movement
• Reinforce a proper response as an aid to an upcoming response
  • Divers, golfer, gymnast

It can be effective aid in acquisition , performance, and retention of motor skills

Implementation requires effective planning by the teacher and use by the students

Benefit

• In a large class, students can be instructor to mentally practice a certain number of movements or exercise while they are waiting their turn to use their equipment