Motor Skills and Cognitive Abilities Quiz

General Information About the Exam

• The final exam is comprehensive, focusing more on recent material (sessions 1-10: 25%, sessions 12-21: 30%, sessions 23-29: 45%)
• The exam is on Monday, December 16th, from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM (EST) in lecture hall TWS 0320.
• The exam covers sessions 1-29, including both lectures and labs.
• The format will be similar to previous exams, including multiple-choice, true/false, and open-ended questions.
• Interpret questions literally based on course material.

Definition and Examples - Notion of Motor Control

• Motor control: Understanding how the neuromuscular system activates and coordinates muscles and limbs for motor skills (known or new).
• Coordination: Head, body, and limb patterning relative to each other and environmental objects/events.

Definition and Examples - Notion of Motor Skills

• Motor skill: Voluntary actions or tasks using joint and body segments to achieve goals, causing changes in the environment or the person's relationship to it.
• An activity is a motor skill if it

1. Has a goal.
2. Is voluntary.
3. Involves joint or body part movement.
4. Has been learned through practice/experience.

Definitions and Examples - Notion of Skill Level and Performance

• Skill level: A measure of competence in performing a task.
• Skill level criteria: Consistency, adaptability, and efficiency.
• Performance: The act of executing a motor skill at a specific time and in a specific situation.

Definition and Examples - Notion of Movement

• Movements: Specific patterns of motion by joints and body segments to accomplish an action goal.
• Movements are component parts of motor skills for achieving goals.

Definition and Examples - Notion of Neuromotor Processes

• Neuromotor processes: Mechanisms in the central and peripheral nervous systems, and muscular systems, underlying motor skill/movement control.
• Movements and motor skills are observable, but neuromotor processes are not.

Why Differentiate Movements, Motor Skills, and Neuromotor Processes?

• Motor skills, movements, and neuromotor processes are distinct levels of motor control/learning analysis.
• Individuals may achieve the same goal (skill) with different movement patterns and neuromotor processes.
• This distinction allows analysis on different levels (observable vs. unobservable processes).

Motor Skills: Classifications Along a Continuum

• Motor skills can be classified along a continuum based on several factors, such as:
  • Size of primary musculature required
  • Specificity of beginning & end of action
  • Relative importance of cognitive & motor demands
  • Stability of the environment The main categories are:
• Gross: large muscle movements (e.g., walking)
• Fine: small muscle movements (e.g., sewing)
• Discrete: specified beginning & end (e.g., flipping a light switch)
• Continuous: arbitrary beginning and end (e.g., walking)
• Serial: a series of discrete movements (e.g., playing the piano)

Performance Outcome Measures

• Descriptors of the results of a motor skill, such as:
  • Magnitude
  • Accuracy
  • Time/speed
  • Distance
  • Height

Performance Process Measures

• Descriptors of the process of a motor skill, such as:
  • Kinematics
  • Kinetics
  • Brain activity/imaging (e.g., EMG)

Outcome measures: Error measures

• Dichotomy: hit/miss
• Absolute error (AE): unsigned deviation from a target or criterion (amount of error w/o direction)
• Constant error (CE): magnitude of error in a specific direction (bias)
• Variable error (VE): consistency of performance (standard deviation)

Measures of Time

• Simple RT: reaction time to a single stimulus.
• Choice RT: reaction time to multiple stimuli.
• Discrimination RT: reaction time to discriminate among multiple stimuli.

Kinematics

• Kinematics: Branch of mechanics describing spatial & temporarily components of motion (e.g., motion capture).
• Derived measures: Displacement, velocity, acceleration, jerk, coordination.

Kinetics

• Kinetics: Branch of mechanics dealing with the cause of motion; evaluates forces in a system.
• Examples: Force (push/pull), torque (force x distance).

Muscle Activity - Electromyography (EMG)

• EMG: Measuring electrical activity of muscles; a measure of neural drive, force, fatigue, coordination.
• EMG signal: Summation of motor-unit action potentials.
• Quantitative analysis: Amplitude, timing, and frequency.
• Limitations: Indirect measure of muscle contraction, potentially low skin conductivity; crosstalk.

Brain Activity - Electroencephalography (EEG)

• EEG: Measures electrical patterns created by rhythmic oscillations of neurons; directly measures brain activation.
• Measures: EEG power (frequency band).
• Advantages: High temporal resolution, relatively cheap, portable.
• Limitations: Limited spatial resolution, potentially longer set-up time.

Stepwise Movement Generation - Challenging Various Stages

• Stages in movement generation: Stimulus identification, response selection, movement preparation/programming.
• Importance of sensorimotor processing and action control.

Sensory, cognitive, motor processing stages

• Stages in movement generation: Sensory information encoding, integration, executive functions, strategies, decision making, goal setting, movement planning/programming, and motor outputs.
• Processes involved in motor control, including integration and coordination at multiple levels (sensory, cognitive, motor).

Executive Functions

• Top-down cognitive control, involving concentration and attention; used when intuition/instinct is insufficient.
• Specific components: Inhibitory control, working memory, cognitive flexibility, higher-level planning, reasoning, problem-solving.
• Prefrontal cortex crucial for executive functions (but not the only brain area involved).

Memory Systems

• Short-term memory: Temporarily holds small amounts of information.
• Long-term memory: Permanent storage, including semantic and episodic memory for general and personally experienced knowledge.
• Procedural memory: How-to knowledge.
• Declarative memory: What-to-do knowledge.

Theories - Capacity Model

• Central-resource capacity theories: Attentional resources are limited, and tasks compete for these resources.
• Fixed capacity models: Attention is a fixed resource.
• Flexible capacity models: Task demands determine the amount of attention available.
• Arousal: Can affect attention capacity.

Top-down and bottom-up attentional processes

• Top-down (endogenous): internally-driven attention.
• Bottom-up (exogenous): externally-driven attention, due to stimulus characteristics.

Attentional focus

• Directing attention to specific aspects of the performance or environment.
• Varying width (broad or narrow) and direction (external or internal).

Attention and automaticity

• Automaticity: Skill performance with little or no attention capacity demand.

Measurement of Attention

• Dual task paradigm: Using a secondary task to assess demands of the primary task; attention demands are inversely related to performance on the secondary task.

Schematic overview of the motor systems

• The prefrontal cortex is involved with information processing with high level integration
• Prefrontal cortex plays an important role in executive functions, such as inhibitory control and working memory.
• PFC plays role in selecting appropriate responses, anticipating action consequences, and sequencing behavior over time.

Cortical regions - prefrontal cortex

• High level of information processing integration.
• Important functions include executive functions, such as inhibitory control, working memory, selecting appropriate responses, anticipating action consequences, and sequencing behavior over time.

Motor planning and programming

• Planning: Selection of appropriate motor plans, executed by the premotor cortex (LPMC, SMA) (with basal ganglia and cerebellum modulated).
• Programming: Implementing pre-determined movement plan; includes primary motor cortex, premotor and supplementary motor areas (with basal ganglia and cerebellum modulated).

Basal Ganglia - structure

• Striatum (caudate nucleus + putamen)
• Globus pallidus
• Substantia nigra
• Subthalamic nucleus.

Cerebellum - inputs and outputs

• Motor execution.
• Motor planning.

Cerebellum - functions

• Spatial accuracy.
• Timing
• Muscle tone
• Motor control
• Learning
• Anticipatory motor computation (accounting for effects of movements)

Feedforward (open-loop) and feedback (closed-loop) control

• Open-loop control: Sensory information does not affect subsequent commands during the action.
• Closed-loop control: Sensory information is used to adjust subsequent commands during the action.

Neural systems and motor learning

• Relationship between learning and memory.
• Encoding, acquisition, consolidation, storage, retrieval.

Various forms of learning

• De novo motor learning: Extension of existing motor behaviors using new skills.
• Motor adaptation: Adjustment in response to changes in the environment.

General characteristics of motor learning

• Six characteristics of motor learning: Improvement, consistency, stability, persistence, adaptability, reduced attention demand.

Assessment of motor learning

• Methods: Retention, transfer, dual-task, etc.
• Assessment measures: Improvement, consistency, stability, persistence, adaptability, reduction in attention demand, etc.

Stages of learning

• Three-stage model (Fitts & Posner): Cognitive, associative, and autonomous stages.
• Two-stage model (Gentile): Getting the idea of the movement, fixation/diversification.

Variability of practice

• Increased variety of movement or environmental context.
• Contextual interference (CI): Varying practice contexts lead to more learning benefit
• Blocked vs Random practice.

Practice schedule

• Contextual interference (CI): Interference in practice performance improves learning, especially for complex tasks.
• Blocked vs. Random practice: Varying practice contexts (random) facilitates learning to control skill components better than consistent tasks (blocked).

Main approaches to assist learning

• Verbal guidance
• Demonstration
• Feedback

Demonstration

• Information about demonstration technique for skills.

Feedback

• Task-intrinsic (sensory feedback), and augmented feedback (external feedback)
• Types of feedback (knowledge of results / knowledge of performance)
• Frequency & type of feedback affect learning.
• Augmented feedback bandwidth: Defines the range of error or precision before feedback is provided.

In what context is KR effectively used

• Confirm learner's intrinsic feedback assessment, determine outcome when intrinsic feedback is unavailable, motivate continuous practice, and facilitate discovery learning.

In what context is KP effectively used

• Skills requiring specific techniques.
• Coordination needs adjusting and improving.

Frequency of augmented feedback

• Frequent use of feedback is not always beneficial; learn to become independent of feedback.

Bandwidths in augmented feedback

• Feedback provided only if errors exceed a threshold.

Review of key definitions before in-class illustration

• Task-intrinsic feedback (sensory).
• Augmented feedback (external).
• Quantitative & Qualitative augmented feedback.

Introduction to motor adaptation

• Motor adaptation: Adjusting patterns for a change in the environment/body.
• Adaptation paradigms (prism, force fields, etc.).

Role of errors in motor adaptation

• Errors provide signals for adaptation.

Brain structures involved in motor adaptation

• Cerebellum, cortex, basal ganglia.

Introduction to motor sequence learning

• Motor sequence learning: Learn sequences of actions.
• Sequences: simple or complex sequences, serial reaction time task.

Skill learning paradigms

• Learning tasks (discrete, continuous), visuomotor associations, and arbitrary continuous skills.

Test your knowledge on motor skills, cognitive flexibility, and memory functions. This quiz covers various aspects of abilities in performing specific skills, including the distinctions between motor and general abilities. Understand the role of muscle contractions and the importance of problem-solving in skill execution.