Perceptual - Motor Skill Learning

1. Perceptual - Motor Skill Learning http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~aglass/M&ASyllabus.htm

2. Perceptual-Motor Skill Learning • Motor Skill Learning • Perceptual-Motor Skill Learning

3. Planning & Motor Learning • Motor learning occurs because the final posture of a successful movement is stored in memory. • When the target again appears in the same location the posture is retrieved and becomes the plan that is programmed and executed. • The retrieval of stored postures reduces the amount of computation necessary for fast, accurate action. • Hence, motor learning occurs through the accumulation of plans.

4. Stages of Motor Skill Learning • Declarative: New activity requires many small motor plans. Constant attention required. • Associative: Some attention still required to control multiple independent sequences. • Autonomous: A single motor program for the entire action. Attention freed to perform other activities.

5. Apraxia • Apraxia results when a person no longer has access to • the posture representations necessary to guide action • the perceptual information necessary to select the correct posture representations

6. Characteristics of Motor Skill Learning • The learning function is a log function. • Most of the improvement comes at the beginning. • However, there is not an asymptote. There is always improvement with practice.

7. Practice and speed in cigar making Each point is the average cycle-time over one week’s production for one operator. The ordinate is the total production by the operator since beginning work. (After Crossman, 1959).

8. Why does a motor skill become autonomous? • Retrieval rather than construction of final posture representation • Efficiency scheduling of movements • Representation and/or execution downloaded to cerebellum

9. More Characteristics of Motor Plans • Though exact repetition is the key to learning, what is learned is very abstract. • Writing

10. Perceptual-Motor Skill Learning • Motor Skill Learning • Perceptual-Motor Skill Learning

11. Question • In order to learn to type, how much time should you spend practicing every day?

12. Teaching Postal Workers to Type (Baddeley & Longman, 1978) • English postal workers were taught to type so that they could use new mail sorting equipment • Four different training schedules were used

13. Learning for four training schedules (hours x day)

14. Characteristics of Learning Function • The learning function is a log function. • Most improvement at beginning. • However, there is not an asymptote. There is always improvement with practice. • The study interval from the beginning of training to criterion is shorter for massed than for distributed practice.

15. Learning Asymptote for Four Training Schedules

16. Practice Time • The total time spent practicing to reach criterion is longer for massed than for distributed practice.

17. Retention Function

18. Characteristics of Retention Function • Long-term retention appears to be a function of number of days of practice rather than number of hours of practice • So distributed learning produces better retention than massed learning • Perhaps forgetting does not occur for routine activities

19. Autonomous vs. Automatic • An action under the control of a plan stored in memory is autonomous. It does not require computation so other (mental) actions requiring computation may be carried on at the same time. • Dressing, eating, speaking, writing • An autonomous action that is initiated by a perceptual input, e.g., hitting, is called automatic. • Hitting and catching • Normal activity relies on both autonomous and automatic actions.

20. Huck and the woman • When Huck Finn put on a dress and tried to pass for a girl a woman found him out right away. • How?

21. Huck moved like a boy. • …. When you set out to thread a needle don’t hold the thread still and fetch the needle up to it; hold the needle still and poke the thread at it; that’s the way a woman most always does, but a man always does t’other way. • And when you throw at a rat or anything, hitch yourself up a-tiptoe and fetch your hand up over your head as awkward as you can…. Throw stiff-armed from the shoulder, like there was a pivot there for it to turn on, like a girl; not from the wrist and elbow, with your arm out to one side, like a boy. • And, mind you, when a girl tries to catch anything in her lap she throws her knees apart; she don’t clap them together, the way you did when you catched the lump of lead.