Perceptual - Motor Skill Learning

Perceptual-Motor Skill Learning Motor Skill Learning Perceptual-Motor Skill Learning

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.

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.

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

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.

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).

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

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

Perceptual-Motor Skill Learning Motor Skill Learning Perceptual-Motor Skill Learning

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

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

Learning for four training schedules (hours x day)

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.

Learning Asymptote for Four Training Schedules

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

Retention Function

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

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.

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?

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.