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Chapter 7 : Stages of learning

Presented by: Ahmad Farha, Priscilla Sanchez, and Tatiana Nunez

KINE 4100

Key Questions

Are there identifiable stages of learning that people pass through when acquiring motor skills?

Does everyone go through the same stages of learning when acquiring motor skills?

How do cognitive based and dynamical systems theories differ in their conceptualizations of stages of learning in the acquisition of motor skills?

What is expertise, and how does someone become an expert at a motor skill?

Given sufficient motivation and practice, is everyone capable of becoming expert?

Is initial Performance when first learning a motor skill a good indicator of a person’s ultimate potential for learning the skill?

The Fitts & Posner three-stage model of motor learning

Paul Fitts and Michael Posner created three stage model in 1967

Cognitive

Associative

Autonomous

Stages of learning that people go through

Can vary in rate

The Cognitive Stage of Learning

Learners have an understanding of the goal of the skill but don't know the correct movement pattern

Dependent on declarative memory and outside sources for information

Information is consciously manipulated and rehearsed

“Think” their way through the performance

Trying to connect what is learned to how the movement is being performed

Experimental

Characteristics

Frequent major errors

Errors vary in type and extent

Engage in self-talk

All can lead to confusion, frustration, and loss of motivation

Instruction In the Cognitive Stage

Need to be clear and accurate when giving information

Use verbal instructions and demonstrations

Help identify appropriate sources of environmental information

Show how previous skills and knowledge can be transferred

Frequent verbal feedback

Maintain their level of motivation

The Associative Stage of Learning

Intermediate Stage

Movement related information gets encoded

Not wholly dependent on declarative memory

Characteristics

Understand the basic goals of the skill

Errors and the variability between them become less frequent

Errors begin to show a bias

Movement is quicker and smoother

Being to integrate features of the environment into their performance

Movements will be timed more accurately

Instruction in the Associative Stage

Identify and respond to changes in the environment

Use alternations to activities : changing surface, ball, kind of target, etc.

Reduce the amount of feedback to get them conditioned to using their own sensory-produced sources

The Autonomous Stage

Ability to perform the skill without thinking about the mechanics

Move from declarative memory to procedural memory

People in this stage can make for bad coaches because they forget the declarative knowledge of a skill

Characteristics

Perform the skill while thinking of something else

Don’t need to focus on the movement of the skill but can refine other areas

Able to adjust to many different environmental situations

Instruction in the Autonomous Stage

Improvements take longer to recognize

Maintain current levels of performance and motivation

Focus of refining movements and adapting them to different situations

Progression

Progression in every stage depends on the person and instruction given

Simple skills take less time than more complex skills

Some may not even progress into the autonomous stage

Progression is continuous

Gradual transitions from one stage to the next

Stages Of Learning From A Dynamical Systems Perspective

The stages of learning take a different interpretation than that of Fitts and Posner.

Dynamical theorists recognize the same behavioral characteristics of learners acquiring motor skills, but they are interpreted in different ways.

Constraints, factors that provide the boundaries on the movement possibilities. They set the limits within movement patterns that are possible and they guide patterns of movement toward preferred states called attractors.

Three basic constraints: organismic, task and environmental

Bernstein, coordination (skill learning) is the process of learning to control the many additional degrees of freedom available within the human movement apparatus.

Vereijkens model has three stages: novice, advanced, and expert.

The Novice Stage of Learning

First stage of learning a motor skill

Major challenge that the learner faces is learning how to control the many muscles and joints involved in the movement.

In dynamical theorists, the learner “solves” the movement “problem” by manipulating the “dynamics” of the movement task.

Movement systems involved in producing a skill is accomplished by freezing the degrees of freedom.

Freezing the degrees of freedom: limiting the movement of limbs and joints.

Learning occurs as learners engage in a type of trial-and-error experimentation.

Through this process learners free degrees of freedom so joints can be controlled in more flexible, independent, and effective ways.

The Advanced Stage of Learning

Intermediate stage in Vereijkens dynamical systems model of learning.

Novice stage is marked by freezing movement possibilities (degrees of freedom) advanced stage is marked by freeing the movement possibilities (freeing the degrees of freedom).

Freeing the degrees of freedom: Releasing frozen limbs and joints to move freely.

Previously frozen joints were incorporated into large and sophisticated units of action, in dynamical systems terminology, larger action units are called coordinated structures, or synergies.

Synergies

Synergy: a grouping of joints, muscles, and cells that are temporarily cooperate in acting together as a single collective action unit; can be assembled and unassembled as the need arises; also called coordinators structure.

Process of exploration during the novice stage that leads into the advanced stage of learning, as learners acquire ability to control increasingly greater numbers of degrees of freedom.

Results in greater coordination among limb segments and between limbs.

Movements in this stage are fluid, smoothly coordinated, and relatively effective.

The Expert Stage of Learning

Final stage in Vereijken’s model is the expert stage of learning.

Movement coordination is achieved, but the most effective coordination of movements, complex skills, typically require exploitation of passive and reactive forces in various body systems as well as the environment.

“Exploitation” is the best descriptor of the expert stage of learning, the learner continues to release degrees of freedom, and recognize others in order to achieve the most efficient movement patterns.

Exploring the degrees of freedom: once basic movement patterns have been developed, this involves learning to exploit the passive and reactive forces generated by kinetic actions of the hip-knee-ankle system.

Perceptual Degrees of Freedom and Learning: Attunement of Affordances

Role of perception during learning

Affordance is a property of an object or of the environment that offers (“affords”) the opportunity for an action.

Dynamical systems perspective says affordances are developed as individuals learn to couple perceptions to certain actions, as they are learning different possibilities of moving given specific sensory information.

Learning expands degree of perceptual-action coupling for greater movement opportunities. Perceptual degrees of freedom is analogous to the sequence of freezing, freeing, and exploiting degrees of freedom of bodily components.

In initial stages, learners will focus on sensory information to control their environment, freezing out other resources.

In the expert stage, learners gain ability to exploit the movement environment.

An essential key to they dynamical systems theory is learning involves the development of the learners ability to couple perceptual information with appropriate actions, a process called attunement.

Instructional Priorities in the Dynamical Systems Model of Learning

Learner is an active seeker of information.

Those espousing a dynamical system approach learn the advocacy of discovery learning methods. Discovery learning: Practice based upon the theory that learners learn best when they discover through exploratory methods the most effective ways of accomplishing motor skills.

Learner will attempt to solve the movement problem through exploring various task solutions. The instructor will introduce the movement problem and the goal that they have to achieve, then facilitates and encourages the learners attempt to discover movement solutions. Instead of the instructor giving specific instructions, the instructor gives a general overview of movement possibilities, that the learner can use for exploration and discovery of what works best.

During the discovery learning method the instructor can ask questions that can give cues to the learner and provide feedback, which helps the learner pick up on a pattern once this happens the instructor can then help the learner refine those movements.

Constraints change constantly, practices should adapt to changing situations.

Self-discovery is the most effective in learning what works best

Benefits of Considering Two Approaches to the Stages of Learning

The two models of the stages of learning both recognize the same observable changes in performance as individuals acquire motor skills. They are different in the theoretical constructs that are used to explain and interpret observable changes.

Fitts and Posner help understand cognitive demand that learners face and increase sensitivity to the limits of human processing capabilities and the need to provide instructional resources in ways matching learners develop process capabilities.

Vereijken’s dynamical systems perspective turns our attention to the interaction of learners with changing characteristics of the environment and task, and to a consideration of the unique characteristics of each learner.

The acquisition of expertise in a motor skill

The study of expertise as a concept places such a great emphasis on the development of cognitive and perceptual elements of skill that motor behavior researchers either failed to recognize its importance to motor expertise early on or failed to recognize the importance of cognition and perception to highly developed levels of performance for motor skills.

Experts are not only better than others at the actual movement patterns of a skill, but also better in their ability to perceive, understand, and respond to the various environments and situations in which the skill is performed.

Expertise cannot be measured simply through measures of skilled performance alone, but involves assessing cognitive and perceptual aspects of skill.

How Long do you think it takes to become an expert?

According to Fitts and Posner it takes 10 years

10-year rule: A rule that comes from observation across several skill domains that it generally requires a minimum of 10 years of deliberate practice to attain expertise in a skill.

How to become an expert:

-Deliberate Practice: Practice that is effortful, highly structured and organized, and directed toward goals and rewards.

Predicting individual success across the stages of learning

Correlational Analysis and the Predictive Strength of Learning Potential at Various Stages of Learning:​​

-The relationship of skill performance between early and later stages of learning typically involves the correlation of some performance measure over time.

- As one progresses through the stages of learning, however, the correlation between current performance and later performance gradually increases and becomes more predictive.

Ackerman’s Explanation of Effects across the Stages of Learning

-General cognitive: abilities include reasoning, problem solving, and verbal abilities, among others; broad-content abilities include knowledge about the goals and movements

-As individuals progress perceptual speed ability becomes more dominant in accounting for performance success because it strengthens stimulus and response and performance becomes quicker and less prone to error.