Modeling and Imagery Does what you see (via your eyes or your imagination) help you, and if so, how?

Part 1: Modeling How do demonstrations work?

Modeling General approach here Look, here’s the deal. This research is fragmented at best, There are social psychological perspectives, neurological perspectives, motor control perspectives and so on. My take is that what we need to focus on is one issue in particular. And that is... What is it the information that a demonstration provides, for learning, how effective is it, and is there an overarching theoretical framework that can help us understand this?

Modeling – an idea of how it works Information could be cues, instructions, descriptions, pictures, demonstrations, or internally generated images) Get information ? ?

Modeling – an idea of how it works Get information ? ? Perhaps one reason why demonstrations are effective is that the information provided is especially rich (and in a form that we have special abilities to sense) – see point light display research

Modeling – point light displays What information do we pick up from a demonstration? ‘Point-light displays’ have been used to show the following: people do not pick up anything from a static image as soon as an image of a human starts to move, all sorts of information is picked up instantaneously

Modeling – point light displays What information do we pick up from a demonstration? People are not able to identify what it is that enables them to recognize and label the movement, but they are able to do it nonetheless What they are seeing is the relative motion of the limbs – we seem to have the ability to pick up such information unconsciously As you can imagine, this would certainly help form a detailed “image of an act” 1 2

Modeling – information provision Of course, there are other ways of providing information What ways might we provide information about a skill to a learner? The point is, perhaps some ways are better than others “a picture is worth a 1,000 words” 1

Modeling – information provision Of course, there are other ways of providing information Perhaps some ways are better than others We certainly pick up relative motion information unconsciously, effortlessly Other types of information are far more effortful, and are perhaps less “rich” Other types of information might not be in a form that is easily communicated to the motor system 1

Modeling – an idea of how it works Get information Image of the act formed ? So, the “idea” might be especially well served by a model. What next? Perhaps an intermediate stage is the formation of some image of successful performance What would such an image lack?

Modeling – an idea of how it works Modeling effect seen in less than 10 trials Modeling effect not seen until 4 weeks of practice Modeling effect: better performance for a group to have seen a demonstration compared to a group that has not seen a demo 1 2

Modeling – an idea of how it works “Coordination” and “control” (Bernstein, 1967; Newell, 1986) Modeling is not immediately effective for tasks that require new patterns of coordination Still works, but takes longer to see the results Even simple tasks learned via observation do not immediately show a benefit when compared to no practice...but after practice they do 1

Modeling – an idea of how it works Get information Image of the act formed Image calibrated by practice Differences between having the idea and having procedural knowledge dictate that this is not the end of the story The act of calibration of course can be further enhanced by continued demonstrations. Whether verbal cues are needed here is another matter 1 2

1 Modeling – an idea of how it works There are several lines of research that agree with this basic idea Differences in recall and recognition performance following observation Cognitive tasks benefit from typical cognitive remembering strategies (scheduling, delay, etc.) Physical practice is better than observation which is better than nothing Benefits of observation only appear after physical practice (see Deakin, 2000, next week) Get information Image of the act formed Image calibrated by practice