motor learning lectures

• Motor Control:  

  Understanding how movement is controlled; A behavioural understanding (rather than a neural understanding) of the ability to regulate or direct the mechanisms essential to movement 

   

  Motor Learning:  

  Understanding how movement skill is acquired (the best way of throwing a javelin) or reacquired (e.g. learning how to walk again after an accident) 

   
• Different types of Motor Learning 

  • Adaptation:  

  Motor system responds to altered environmental constraints (internal or external) to regain/maintain levels of performance  

   

  – Healthy people show trial-to-trial learning based on ‘error-feedback 

  – Can occur in a single session & thought to be largely implicit – Learning measured through ‘after-effects’ & ‘transfer’  

   
• • Skill Learning:  

  Acquiring new patterns of muscle activation to achieve improvements in performance, by reducing errors without compromising movement speed.  

   

  – Definitions are generally vague. Easier to recognise.  

  – Unlike adaptation, skill learning can only be achieved through extended practice.  

  – Within-session gains are known as ‘online effects’  

  – Between-session gains are known as ‘offline effects’  

  – The ‘power law of practice’ states that skill learning is directly related to the number of practice repetitions (Korma 

   
• Three Stages of Learning: 

   

  COGNITIVE - “What to do”  

  Developing basic understanding of skill  

  Problem-solving & hypothesis-testing  

  Directing attention to movement  

  Verbal rules of movement  

   

  ASSOCIATIVE - “How to do it”  

  Basic skill established → now refined  

  Performance & consistency improves  

  Reduced problem solving / attention to movement  

  Verbal rules transformed into ‘procedural knowledge’  

   

  AUTONOMOUS - “Do it”  

  Skilled performance  

  Consistent and fluent movement execution  

  Minimal attention to movement needed (automatic) 
• Gentile’s Learning Stages Model: 

   

  INITIAL STAGE: 

  acquisition of a movement co-ordination pattern which matches action to regulatory environmental conditions  

  ability to discriminate between regulatory and nonregulatory environmental features 

   
• Gentile’s Learning Stages Model: 

  LATER STAGES: 

  adapt movement pattern to demands of any situation   

  perform the skill with an economy of effort 

  increase consistency in achieving the goal 

    - CLOSED SKILL → ‘FIXATION’ refinement of invariant movement patterns (correct, consistent & efficient) 

    - OPEN SKILL → ‘DIVERSIFICATION’ Capacity to modify movement pattern according to environmental conditions 
•  

  ‘Closed’ skills: 

   Environmental constraints are constant & unchanging  

  Skill thus does not need to be adapted to environment (as much)  

   

  ‘Open’ skills: 

  Environmental constraints are/could constantly change  

  Skill needs to be adapted to such changes 
•  

  Theory of Reinvestment: 

  In some situations, performers ‘reinvest’ cognitive effort into using movement knowledge from earlier stages of learning 
• MEMORY & MOTOR LEARNING: 

   

  Model of Fitts and Posner & Anderson (1984):  

  • Important role of working memory and long-term memory 
  • Motor learning initially requires use and storage of declarative knowledge (verbal rules of movement)  
  • Heavily depends on working memory   
  • Learning - procedural (implicit) knowledge accrues through chunking 
• ATTENTION & MOTOR LEARNING: 

   

  Attention as (limited) cognitive resource  

  • Early stage learning: skill execution requires a lot of attention  
  • Separate steps, individually executed and focused upon  
  • Chunking frees up attention  
  • Internal (body, movement execution) to external focus (outcome of movement) 

   
• Strategies to Enhance Memory for Action: 

  - Reduce complexity of the verbal instruction  

  Change abstract concepts into a meaningful set of movements  

  • Direct attention focus to the outcome, not process 

    - Reduce working memory load 

      - Storage of info in long-term memory  

      - Retrieval of info from long term memory 

  HOW? 

  • Visual metaphoric imagery  
  • Increase meaningfulness of movement task  
  • Verbal labels 
• Further Strategies to Enhance Memory for Action; 

  • Keep time between instructions/demonstration and practice short and free of other activity  
  • Do not describe or demonstrate ‘what not to do’  
  • If a patient asks questions after your demonstration/instruction repeat them before you allow physical practice  
  • Demonstrate a sequence rather than parts – help people make sense of the whole first 
• Transferring Learning from One Context to Another: 

  The influence of previous experience on the performance of a skill in a new context or on learning a new skill  

   
• Positive transfer results from:  

  1. Similar components of the skill used in each setting  

  2. Similar cognitive processing is involved in the two setting 
• Negative transfer: 

  1. Inherent difficulty of ‘unlearning’ - altering a preferred movement pattern developed in a particular setting  

  2. “Cognitive confusion” – uncertainty about how to move in a seemingly familiar environment 
• Transfer of Learning ‘Take-home-messages for rehabilitation’ 

  1. Include practice opportunities that are or closely simulate everyday contexts and situations i.e. those contexts and situations where the skills will be used  

   

  2. Take advantage of opportunities that allow patients to draw on previous experience  
• Movement Instructions: 

   “Communication directed at patient [or athlete/participant] regarding a desired action or how to perform a desired action or skill.”  

   
• Effective Instruction:  

   

  Cues  

  Short concise phrases that serve to:  

   

  1. Direct attention towards regulatory conditions in the environment  

    - e.g. ‘here’s the slope’  

   

  2. Prompt action of key movement components of the skill   

    - e.g. ‘forward and up’ for sit to stand  

   

  Verbal cues may be given concurrently, but avoid a running commentary  

  Therefore, prioritise and use cues for one or two key aspects of performance 
• Demonstration 

  Communicate a lot of information in short amount of time  

  Use sparingly – like instruction  

   

  Effective demonstrations provided by:  

  Experts (expert to beginner): quality of performance is related to the quality of the demonstration  

   

  • Novices (beginner to beginner): discourages imitation and encourages active problem solving  

   

  The amount of information provided should be aligned with learner’s attention capacity 
• Movement Feedback 

  Information about the execution and outcome of a previous movement attempt, used to modify further movement attempts 
• 1. Intrinsic Feedback 

  Task-related (sensory) feedback, naturally obtained during performance  

    - visual 

    - auditory 

    - tactile 

    - proprioception 
• 2. Augmented (Extrinsic) Feedback (therapists, trainers, coaches) 

  Feedback obtained through external sources, adding to intrinsic feedback 

    - knowledge of performance 

    - knowledge of results 
• Categories of Augmented Feedback:  

   

  Knowledge of Performance (KP) – gives information about the movement characteristics that led to a performance outcome – e.g. ‘take a longer step with your ‘good’ leg ’   

   
• Knowledge of results (KR) – gives information about the outcome or achievement of a goal – e.g. speed or distance walked; degrees improvement in range of movement, % accuracy of reach  
• Purpose: facilitate goal achievement & motivate learning   

  Early learning: relatively greater reliance on KP vs KR  

  Later in learning: more and more KR is used 
• Reducing Augmented Feedback Frequency: 

   

  1. Fading technique: gradually reduce frequency as skill develops 

   

  2. Performance-based bandwidths: give feedback when performance falls outside acceptable range 

   

  3. Summary and average techniques: only provide feedback after a certain number of trials 

   

  4. Self-selected frequency: only give feedback upon request  

      - generally after successful attempt 

      - enhances problem solving & motivation 
• The deliberate practice hypothesis: 

  ‘individualised training activities especially designed by a coach or teacher to improve specific aspects of an individual’s performance through repetition and successive refinement’ 
• Whole and Part Practice  

  • Analyse the skill to determine its component parts  

  • Whole v part decision should be based on:  

    - Task complexity: the number of parts or components and the amount of information processing demands  

    - Task organisation: the relationships between the components that make up the skill     - High levels of organisation = component parts are spatially and temporally interdependent (e.g. basketball jump shot, juggling)  

      - Low levels of organisation = spatial-temporal relationships are independent (e.g. dance routines) 
• Deciding Upon Whole or Part Practice: 

  • Remember the importance of practice specificity 
  • Whole and part-practice should still take place in situations that match contextual factors as far as possible  

   

  • Segmentation – practising parts in sequence then practising the whole  
  • Simplification – reducing the complexity of part or all of the skill e.g. making the object less complex, reducing attention demands 
  • Practice a whole skill but attend to a part of it – good for skills with high interdependency e.g. gait training 
• Constant practice: the rote repetition of the same task 

  Variable practice: work on a variety of skills from the same task 
•  

  Random practice = several tasks or skills are practiced in a random order  

  Blocked practice = the skills or tasks to be learned are repeated in blocks, each block is repeated in the same order 
• Massed practice:  

  – amount of practice time is greater than amount of rest between trials  

  – i.e. short rest periods (long practice sessions, but less frequent) 
• Distributed practice:  

  – the amount of rest between trials is equal to or greater than the amount of time per trial (short, more frequent sessions) 

   

  Distributed practice seems best for learning in general and particularly for continuous tasks 
•  Discrete tasks: massed practice is possibly better 
• 1. Fatigue Hypothesis – fatigue negatively influences learning for massed practice schedules  
• 2. Cognitive effort Hypothesis – massing practice within a few days may become monotonous leading to reduced cognitive effort 
• 3. Memory consolidation Hypothesis – neurochemical processes required for storing memories occur over time without additional practice; distributed practice provides better  
• Mental Practice: 

  The cognitive rehearsal of a skill without overt physical movement  

  Seeing and/or feeling oneself perform the skill