1. Chapter 5
Stages of Learning

2. Things to Consider Regarding the Stages of Learning
Transitions between learning stages cannot be clearly delineated.
One stage blends into the next.
A learner can be in different stages for learning different skills.
Stages of learning are not dependent on age.

3. Your Perspective
Imagine that you and your roommate are trying to learn a new skill together, and you are at a more advanced stage of learning. What can you do to continue learning while also helping your roommate not to be discouraged?
How would you feel if the situation was reversed, and your roommate was more advanced than you?

4. Models of Stages of Learning
Fitts and Posner’s three-stage model
Gentile’s two-stage model

5. Fitts and Posner’s Three-Stage Model of Learning

6. Learner at the Cognitive Stage
Introduced to a new motor skill
Develops an understanding of the movement’s requirements
Attempts numerous techniques and strategies; a trial-and-error approach
Reformulates past movement experiences in an effort to solve the current movement problem
Needs guidance to detect and correct errors

7. Learner at the Associative Stage
Is committed to refining one particular movement pattern
Performs more consistently, with fewer errors
Is better at detecting errors and developing strategies to eliminate them
Needs constructive practice experiences and effective feedback from practitioner

8. Learner at the Autonomous Stage
Can perform a skill proficiently
Can perform multiple tasks simultaneously
Performs consistently and confidently, with few errors
Can detect and correct those errors that are made
May become discouraged and unmotivated if proficiency comes slowly
Practitioner serves as motivator

9. Gentile’s Two-Stage Model of Learning

10. Getting the Idea of the Movement
Learner’s goal:
Develop an understanding of movement requirements and the environment in which task is to be performed
Organize a corresponding movement
Instruction and practice should facilitate the development of a basic movement pattern.

11. Fixation/Diversification Stage
Learner’s goal: Refinement of the skill
Fixation:
Closed skills
Example: Performing on a balance beam
Diversification:
Open skills
Closed skills with inter-trial variability
Example: Shooting a hockey puck from various angles and positions; golf putting

12. Inferring Progress Indicators That Learning Has Occurred
Movement pattern
Attention
Knowledge and memory
Error detection and correction
Self-confidence

13. Improvements in Movement Pattern
Increase in coordination and control
More fluid muscle activity
More efficient energy expenditure
Increased consistency

14. Freezing and Freeing the Degrees of Freedom

15. Paying Attention Attention to skill execution:
As skill proficiency develops, the need to attend consciously to each aspect of the movement decreases—and performance becomes virtually automatic.
Allocation of visual attention:
Skilled performers direct attention to relevant areas.
Beginners have difficulty discriminating between relevant and irrelevant cues.

16. Measuring Progress Performance curves: Retention tests Transfer tests
Negatively accelerating curve
Positively accelerating curve
Linear curve
S-shaped curve
Retention tests
Transfer tests

17. Types of Performance Curves

18. Limitations of Performance Curves
Represent temporary effects and cannot establish relative permanence.
Constructed from measurements that are often obtained by calculating the mean of several trials.
Each trial could be very different.

19. Performance Plateaus
Period of time during the learning process in which no obvious changes in performance occur.
May be a transitional period in the learning process.
Not necessarily an indication that learner has stopped learning.
Possible reasons:
Fatigue, anxiety, lack of motivation
Limitations in type of performance measurement being used

20. Your Perspective
If and when you hit a plateau in your ability to learn a new skill, how do you handle it? What do you do to overcome anxiety or gain new motivation?
How would you help someone else overcome his/her performance plateau?