CHAPTER 7
Preparing for the Learning Experience
Need to Know!
Study Concentrations
1) Understand the different types of goals and how they affect the actions of the
instructor and the learner (p. 187-188)
2) Why should goals be Challenging, Attainable, Realistic, and Specific?
3) Understand the importance of aiming for positive transfer and generalization in
the learning of motor skill.
4) Understand what happens in the different stages of learning and how that affects
the performance of learners and the actions of the instructor.
5) Understand the different measures of performance and how an instructor can use
these to assess the level of performance of a learner.
6) Understand what some of the more important observable products of learning are
(p. 205-208) and how an instructor can use those.
Stages of Performance and Learning (p. 195-198 and p. 12-14)
A number of researchers have identified that learning is a process that occurs in stages
based on how learners behaved as they learned a new skill. All these stages are on a
continuum.
Fitts & Posner (1967):
Cognitive ---- Associative ---- Autonomous
(Trying)
(homing in)
(free and “thoughtless”)
Adams (1971)
Verbal motor --------------- Motor
(more thinking/talking)
(more doing)
Gentile (1972)
Getting the idea ------------- Fixation(closed skill) / diversification(open skill)
(Fine tune / adaptability)
Newell (1985)
Coordination ----------------- Control
(Acquire the skill)
(adaptability to new situation as needed)
All four interpretations are very similar in that they reflect that initially we try to get the
idea of how to do the skill, and acquire the coordination of our body parts. This requires
that we think and analyze (are cognitively active). Later in the learning process the
performance of the skill becomes more automatic and less thinking is required, with the
emphasis shifting to the physical and physiological qualities of the learner. The learner
gains a greater level of control and fine-tunes the skill to optimize the level of
performance.
What happens to performance as we learn and get better?
Early in Learning ---------Middle ------------------ Late
in Learning (expert
performance)
Cognitive Stage------Associative Stage---------Autonomous Stage
o
o
Stiff
More relaxed
Automatic
Inaccurate
More accurate
Accurate
Inconsistent
More consistent
Consistent
Slow, Halting
More fluid
Fluid
Timid
More confident
Confident
Indecisive
More decisive
Certain
Inadaptable
More adaptable
Adaptable
Inefficient
More efficient
Efficient
Many errors
corrects them
Fewer errors
Recognizes errors and
Early in Learning (cognitive stage): Large change in limb & body coordination
and coordination with the environment. Initially degrees of freedom are frozen
(reflected in the clumsy, stiff, uncoordinated way of performing the skill), but as
we practice more we discover which muscles need to be used and how, when, and
where they need to be used, making the performance much smoother, fluent, and
energy efficient.
Later in Learning (autonomous stage):
 We become more and more aware of the kinematic and kinetic
characteristics of the skill and become able to exploit gravitational forces
and opponent's forces (i.e., judo, spring board, trampoline) more
effectively
 We become more tuned in to environmental regulatory features, identify
critical, relevant information more quickly and more accurately, and learn
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to use it more effectively allowing us to anticipate what the opponent may
do. Have you ever been made to feel like a klutz by a highly skilled
athlete, someone who played circles around you and made you feel
completely powerless because he/she seemed to know exactly what you
were going to do?
We become able to pay less and less attention to the performance of the
actual skill, so more attention becomes available to focus on tactical
aspects of the game.
We also become more aware of incorrect performances and are able to
correct our own mistakes.
A number of changes occur as learners move through the stages of learning:
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
Change in rate of improvement (power law of practice)
Change in movement coordination
Change in altering preferred coordination pattern
Change in muscles used for the skill
Change in energy cost: becoming more efficient
Change in achieving the kinematic goals of the skill: The technique is
performed better
Change in visual selective attention
Change in conscious attention
Change in error detection and correction capabilities
Power Law of Practice
Early in practice large improvements in performance take place, but the rate of
improvement decreases more and more as practice continues. The changes in
performance become more and more subtle and refined with continued deliberate
practice. The performance curve of raw performance scores is typically a
negatively accelerated curve (a power curve; see below) that seems to flatten out
after a long period of practice indicating very little continued improvement.
However, when the scales of the axes are converted to log scales the curve
becomes an almost a straight line, indicating that learning continues as we
continue to practice purposefully for years and years. What is being a learned
change as we continue to practice. What an expert learns from practice is very
different from what a beginner learns. The performance improvements are more
subtle and focused on different issues (such as learning innovative offensive
strategies; tricking the opponent, etc) later in practice.
Expertise

To become an expert takes about 10 years of deliberate, purposeful practice, with
intensely focused and goal-directed practice sessions for multiple hours per day.
Expertise is task specific: A great golfer will know very little about how to

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perform baseball skills, gymnasts are typically klutzes in ball sports, etc., unless
they practice those sports.
Experts have a different knowledge structure about their activity than
beginners. Experts
o Have more and better organized concepts and knowledge about the
activity
o Can relate new information more quickly to their existing knowledge
o Have more decision rules available to them (what to do in certain
situations)
o Have a more in-depth understanding of the activity so that they see a
greater number of alternatives, enabling them to adapt more quickly in a
game
o Because of the extensive knowledge structure and organization the expert
remembers more information and remembers it better than beginners
o Can solve problems and make decisions more quickly, effectively, and
accurately because of their knowledge structure and skill automaticity
Visual information from the environment is used more effectively by experts.
Experts
o Search the environment more effectively
o Focus attention more effectively on relevant stimuli
o Detect critical information more quickly
o Perceive more useful information and patterns in the environment
o Can use the information more effectively in making decisions because of
their extensive knowledge structure
It takes many years of focused, specific experiences and exposures to the environmental
stimuli to become skilled in visual detection of activity-specific patterns, whether these
are the technique of a skill as in diving and gymnastics or activities of daily living
(putting on a jacket correctly), or offensive and defensive pattern in a game such as
football or soccer. Many of these capabilities are acquired implicitly (subconsciously) as
parts of the many experiences experts have gone through. The coach/teacher/therapist is
responsible for creating the large variety of experiences in practice sessions that allow the
students to learn the critical components of a skill AND the regulatory features in the
environment.
How do we determine whether someone has learned anything?
Observe what happens with performance over time!
What do you look for?
o
o
Improvements in performance over time as a result of practice
Whether the improvement is permanent
How do you know performance has improved?
o
Measure!!!
o
o
o
Plot the measurements!!!
Analyze the data using statistics!!!
Keep a record of performance over time!!!
Performance Measures Other than Reaction Time (not all in the book,
but see p. 199-208)
Performance Outcome Measures: These are measures that give you an idea of the result of the
performance. A number of these measures can be used in any performance situation while others
are more difficult to implement. The measures below can be applied in virtually all activities of
daily living and sports.
Performance Production Measures: These are measures that tell us something about the actual
Measure
Equipment Needed
Time to completion. Example: the mile run
Number of trials to completion: counter
Amount of error (AE, CE, VE). Example:
target shooting or pacing a run
just need a stopwatch
Time on target. Example: tracking a
moving target in a gun sight
clock
Time in balance. Example: Balancing on a
bicycle
clock
Distance covered. Example: 12-min run
measuring tape
measuring tape, marked bullseye,
stopwatch
execution of the skill and not the outcome/result of that execution. In other words, these are
measures about the technique of the skill. Typically one needs much more sophisticated
equipment for these measures. UTEP’ Stanley E. Fulton Biomechanics lab has equipment to
measure Kinematics, Kinetics, and EMG.
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Kinematic (motion related) measures (p. 27-29):
o Displacement: How far?
o Velocity: How fast?
o Acceleration: How much of an increase or decrease in velocity over time: How
quickly did s/he accelerate or decelerate?
Kinetic (force related) measures (p. 29-32)
o Forces: How hard did the person push or pull
o Torque: How much weight can you move in a knee extension or a biceps curl
Neuro-muscular measures (p. 32-33)
o EMG: electromyography, measures electrical activity in the muscles
o EEG: Electroencephalography, measures electrical activity in the brain
Coordination measures (p. 33)
o Plot of Kinematics of several joints in one graph over time (p. 34); Shows how
movement in one joint relates to movement in another.
Performance Curves (plotting the performance measures over time);
Improvements in performance can follow different patterns (see text):
1) A linear (straight line) improvement
2) Negatively accelerated: Most typical and connected to the law of practice
a. Law of Practice (Power Law):
i. Improvement and learning continues almost indefinitely, but to
attain the same amount of improvement requires greater and
greater amounts of practice (i.e. improvement gains become
smaller and smaller as we get better at a skill). Consequently,
you will see large increases in performance early in practice,
but much smaller, subtle changes later in practice. Therefore,
even the world champions can keep learning.
3) Positively accelerated curve (not common)
4) Ogive (S-shaped): Reflects performance plateaus, periods of time when
performance is just not improving much.
Problems with performance curves:

Ceiling and Floor effects:
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Floor effect: The fastest possible time, the minimum
amount of errors, etc. For example, the fastest time for the
100m track sprint has been around 9.9 s for years now.
Ceiling effect: The largest possible score (there is no
possibility of getting a higher score). Example: you are
supposed to balance on one leg for a maximum of 60
seconds and you achieve that. This score does not reflect
how long you could have balanced. The 60 sec ceiling
prevented you from showing your real balancing skill,
therefore it is a problem.
Influence of measurement criterion
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
Easy criterion leads to high scores, and a possible ceiling
effect
Difficult criterion leads to low scores and a very different
performance curve (see below). Consequently your
conclusion about how the learner is progressing may be
incorrect. As a practitioner you have to carefully establish
you performance measurement criteria. If you make them
too easy you can't document progress because of a ceiling
effect. If you make them too hard, students experience little
progress and motivation may go down.

Performance Plateaus (p. 204): period of no apparent improvement in
performance. Can learning still be going on?

Caution: Determining how much learning has occurred during practice
without applying a retention test is a tricky business, because lots of
temporary variables can influence the level of performance during practice
sessions (feedback and fatigue are two big ones). As a result:


You may over- or underestimate the learning that may have
occurred
Performance plateaus may leave the false impression that
no learning is taking place
Assessing Whether Learning has Occurred
I. Retention
Retention tests: After a retention interval of at least 15-20min have the learner
perform the skill without any feedback or other performance enhancing temporary
variables (audience presence; teacher reinforcement and encouragement, etc).
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If learning has occurred, performance during the retention
test should be similar compared to performance at the end
of the practice session
If learning was poor, performance during the retention test
will be worse than that at the end of practice
If there was interference during practice in the learning
process, performance will be worse during the retention test
than at the end of practice
The figure below shows the effect of different criterion restrictions
on the shape of the performance curve. With easy criteria
performance maxes out (reaches the ceiling) early in practice and
you can't determine is performance continues to improve. The use
of a more difficult criterion allows you to document performance
increases throughout practice.
II. Transfer of Learning (p. 190)
Transfer:
The influence of previously practiced or performed skills on the learning of a new skill or
performing the learned skill in a new situation.
Types of Transfer:
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
Near transfer (intratask transfer):
o
Transfer from one task to a similar version of the task or a new situation
in which the task is performed.
Far transfer (intertask transfer):
o
Transfer to a very different task
How to measure transfer:
Transfer tests: Examine the adaptability of the skill that has been learned in new
performance situations
1. A learned skill is performed in a new situation or a
novel variation is learned (intratask transfer):
1. Positive transfer: The skill is performed as well as
in the original performance situation or better
2. Negative transfer: The skill is performed worse than
in the original situation
2. A new skill is learned after completion of practice on
the original skill (intertask transfer):
1. Positive transfer: The initially learned skill has a
facilitative effect on the learning of a new skill
2. Negative transfer: The initially learned skill has a
detrimental effect on the learning of a new skill
Why does Transfer Occur?
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Identical elements hypothesis:
o There is similarity in parts and perceptual components of the different
skills.
Transfer-appropriate processing hypothesis
o There is similarity in thought processes between practice and test
situations (strategies, rules, etc).
Most transfer will occur early in practice; at the expert level skills become
more and more specific and little transfer will occur
Negative transfer usually does not occur between learned motor skills, if it
does it's often do to:
o
Confusion:

Having to make a different response to the same stimulus:
1. Change in the spatial location of a movement: “Now
instead of moving left you need to move right when the
same pass is given”
o
2. A change in the relative timing of the skill: “I know you
learned to bring the stick back fast, but try to do it slow
now”
Negative transfer is usually temporary
Good to Know!
General Drills to Improve Skilled Performances?
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General quickness exercises such as ladder drills and foot fire
General vision training
General balance drills
THEY DON’T WORK!!
Why Not? Skills performed at high levels of performance by experts are
very much independent from each other and from basic drills, therefore
general exercises not directly related to the performance of the skill and do
little to improve that skill’s performance. Advanced players need to work
on their specific skills in variable practice situations: If you want to
perform a skill, work on that skill in a variety of situations!!
Bilateral Transfer (not in text)
Practice with one hand helps performance with the other
Bilateral transfer is asymmetric therefore it would be best to practice one limb first
before the other.
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Symmetrical transfer: Transfer between limbs is the same regardless which limb
is practiced first
Asymmetrical transfer: Transfer is better from one limb to the other.
Research evidence points to greater transfer from the preferred to the nonpreferred limb. Therefore, practice dribbling a basketball with the preferred hand
first, before practicing with the non-preferred. See recommendations on p.
Why does bilateral transfer occur?
 Cognitive explanation: the important cognitive information necessary for
performance of the skill by one hand is the same for the other hand
 Motor Control explanation:
1. Generalized Motor Program explanation: once you learn the skill with
one arm, the control system is able to shift the coordination to the other
arm, because which muscles are used to perform a skill is somewhat
independent of the skill’s coordination (technique or invariant features of
the GMP). The coordination of a skill is abstract so it can be used to
activate different muscle groups (a parameter). For example, think of
writing your signature with your preferred and your non-preferred hands.
2. Inter-hemispheric Communication: normally the left hemisphere of the
brain controls the right side of the body and vice versa, but some of the
activity stays on the same (ipsilateral side) of the body thus left
hemisphere activity can activate the left side as well