Stages of Learning
Chapter 5

Fitts and Posner’s Three Stage
Model
COGNITIVE STAGE
Development of basic movement pattern
Practice
ASSOCIATIVE
STAGE
Refinement of movement pattern
AUTONOMOUS
STAGE
Performance of movement virtually automatic

Cognitive Stage
 High degree of cognitive activity
 Attentional demands high, limited to movement production
 Movements lack synchronization and appear choppy and deliberate
 Numerous errors, typically gross in nature
 Lacks capability to determine cause of errors or correct them

Associative Stage
 More consistent
 Attentional demands for movement production decrease
 Fewer, less gross errors
 Better at detecting cause of errors
 Begin to develop appropriate error correction strategies

Autonomous Stage
 Highest level of proficiency
 Not all learners will reach this stage
 Attention reallocated to strategic decisionmaking
 Consistent
 Confident
 Make few errors and can generally detect and correct those errors that do occur

Practical Application
 Choose a skill and generate a list of practical tips practitioners could follow based on Fitts and Posner’s characteristics of learners across the three stages.
– See Cerebral Challenge #1 on page 100

Gentile’s Two-Stage Model
GETTING THE
IDEA OF THE
MOVEMENT
Development of ability to discriminate between regulatory and nonregulatory conditions
Development of basic movement pattern
Closed Skill
Open Skill
FIXATION
Refinement of movement pattern
DIVERSIFICATION
Adaptation of movement to conform to ever-changing environmental demands

Getting the Idea of the Movement
 Goal is to develop an understanding of movement’s requirements
 Have to learn to discriminate between regulatory and non-regulatory conditions

Fixation/Diversification
 Goal is refinement
 Fixation – Closed skills
– How should skills be practiced?
 Diversification – Open skills
– How should skills be practiced?

Practical Application
 Choose a skill and generate a list of practical tips practitioners could follow based on
Gentile’s two stages of learning.
– See Cerebral Challenge #3 on page 103

Review Questions
 How does the role of the practitioner shift as the learner progresses through Fitts & Posner’s stages of learning? Through Gentile’s two stage model?
 Explain the relationship of fixation/ diversification to closed and open skills.

Inferring Progress: Learner And
Performance Changes
 Coordination and control; freezing degrees of freedom
 Muscle activity; reduction to only those needed
 Energy expenditure; reduction as movement becomes more efficient and coordinated
 Consistency; consistently correct motion or incorrect?
 Attention; less conscious attention; attention may be detrimental; visual attention on relevant stimuli
 Knowledge and memory; access information quicker, solve problems more quickly with fewer errors

Inferring Progress: Learner And Performance
Changes continued
 Error detection and correction; better able to interpret sensory receptor info in recognition schema; may stop a performance to avoid an inefficient movement
 Self-confidence; more success breed more motivation to continue; shoot for 80% success

Review Questions



Describe how a person’s capability of detecting and correcting error changes as a result of practice and moving from early to later stages of learning. Provide an example to illustrate this change.
Describe how novices try to control the degrees of freedom of various limbs as they begin to learn a new skill. Give an example.
Discuss how the muscles used change as a result of practice, and explain why this happens.

Assessing learning from coordination dynamics
 One observes stability and transitions of:
– Temporal movement coordination patterns
– Spatial movement coordination patterns
 The stability or instability of performance across trials helps the observer characterize learning

Performance Curves
 Used to assess progress over time

 Two performance characteristics can be observed with performance curves
–
–
Improvement
Consistency

Types of Performance Curves

Practice performance may misrepresent learning
 Practice performance may overestimate or underestimate learning
– Practice artificially inflates performance
– Transfer and retention test should be given
 Performance plateaus
– Period when little or no improvement occurs

Performance Plateau
 Period of time during the learning process in which no overt changes in performance occur
– May be transitional period in learning process
– Not always indicative of cessation of learning
 Other factors: fatigue, anxiety, lack of motivation
 Limited by performance measurement used

Retention and Transfer Tests
 Both measure persistence of improved skill performance
 Retention test
– Skill performance test give following a period of no practice
 Transfer test
– Measurement of the adaptability of a response determined by testing learner’s ability to use a skill in a novel context or manner

Assessing learning by retention tests
 A common measure to assess the performance characteristic of improvement
 Typical administration of a retention test
–
–
Perform the skill in practice
Period of no practice
– Retention test is administered to determine amount retained

Assessing learning by transfer tests
 Assess the performance characteristics of adaptability
 Performing a practiced skill in:
–
–
Novel context that changes
 Without augmented feedback
 Physical environment
 Personal characteristics
Novel skill variations

Review Questions

Why aren’t performance plateaus indicative that a person has quit learning?
 What characteristics may be represented on a learning curve?
 Compare and contrast retention and transfer tests.