L&M_ Skill Learning PDF

Skill Learning (Lecture 8 & 9) ​ Memory Systems ○​ Long term memory ​ Declarative memory (explicit) ​ Episodic memory: experienced events ​ Semantic memory: facts, general knowledge ​ Nondeclarative memory (implicit)...

Skill Learning (Lecture 8 & 9) ​ Memory Systems ○​ Long term memory ​ Declarative memory (explicit) ​ Episodic memory: experienced events ​ Semantic memory: facts, general knowledge ​ Nondeclarative memory (implicit) ​ Procedural memory ​ Conditioned responses ​ Priming ○​ Explicit memory: memory that consists of memories of which the person is aware, you know that you know the information and can verbalize it ○​ Implicit memory: memory that is formed without the learners awareness and which may be able to be verbalized ​ Patient H.M. ○​ Was an important case to the study of human memory because of the selectivity of his impairments (words, drawings, faces, songs, etc.) ○​ Preserved ability to learn new motor skills or form implicit memories ○​ Normal learning of mirror tracing task ○​ Normal learning on Tower of Hanoi puzzle ​ Skill learning ○​ Serial reaction time task ​ Random condition: random ordering of events ​ Sequence condition: repeating patterns ​ Reaction times become faster over time in the sequence condition, but participants don’t report awareness of the pattern ○​ Procedural memory: knowing how to do something ​ Improves with repeated practice ​ Often hard to verbalize/explain ​ Can be learned and used without conscious awareness ○​ Often involves motor behaviors (physical skills like riding a bike), but procedural memory is not muscle memory ​ Forming associations between specific situations (stimuli) and actions through repetition ​ Selective deficits in skill learning ○​ Parkinson's disease: disorder resulting from disruptions in functioning of the basal ganglia ​ Deficits in dopamine signaling ​ deterioration of motor control ​ Intact declarative memory, but impaired skill learning  ○​ Knowlton, Squire, and Gluck compared performance in the weather prediction task between amnesiacs and PD patients ​ Amnesiacs do not form explicit memory of the task, but performance improves over repeated training ​ PD patients form explicit memories, but show impaired learning from repeated experience ​ Perceptual-motor vs cognitive skills ○​ Perceptual motor skills: learned movement patterns guided by sensory inputs ​ Writing with non-dominant hand, mirror tracing, threading a needle ○​ Cognitive skills: a skill that requires problem solving to the application of strategies ​ Tower of Hanoi puzzle, math problems, reading ○​ Many complex skills involve both perceptual-motor and cognitive components ​ Ex: stenography ​ Closed vs open skills ○​ Closed skill: a skill that involves performing predefined movements in a stable (unchanging) environment ○​ Open skill: a skill in which movements are made on the basis of predictions about changing demands of the environment ​ Skill learning ○​ Most skills aren’t purely open or closed or purely perceptual-motor vs cognitive, but somewhere in the middle ​ Term project skill ​ Open or closed? Perceptual motor components? Cognitive components? ​ Power law of practice ○​ A law stating that the degree to which a practice trial improves performance diminished after a certain point so that additional trials are needed to further improve the skill; learning occurs quickly at first, then slows ○​ Seen for all sorts of skills ○​ Performance improvement occurs quickly at first, over time, takes more and more practice to achieve the same amount of improvement ​ Three stage model of skill acquisition ○​ Stage 1: cognitive stage ​ Learner acquires declarative memory about the skill (memorizing a set of facts about how it is performed ​ Explicit (conscious) rehearsal of declarative memory during practice  ​ Effortful practice based on information gained through observation, instruction, and trial and error ○​ Stage 2: associative stage ​ Learner develops and strengthens a successful procedure (stereotypical action sequences) for executing the skill ​ Chunking of actions ​ Error correction and refinement ​ Decreasing reliance on declarative memory for facts or instructions ○​ Stage 3: autonomous stage ​ Procedure becomes fast and automatic (motor program) ​ Little reliance on declarative memory and cognitive control ○​ Over the course of the three stages you transition from relying on declarative memory to relying on procedural memory ​ Also from a high cognitive load to a low cognitive load ​ Phases of skill acquisition ○​ Early, novice, performance depends on explicit, declarative memory (recalling instructions, planning how to respond to new situations) ○​ Late, expert, performance depends on implicit, procedural memory (automatic responses to familiar situations) ​ Expertise-induced amnesia ○​ Beilock and Carr compared expert and novice golf players’ generic knowledge of golf and episodic memory for putting practice ​ Experts had more generic knowledge, but poorer detailed recollections of their putting behavior (expertise-induced amnesia) ​ Among experts, putting is highly automatic behavior, leading to less active attention to events during performance ​ Skill focused attention ○​ Beilock examined effect of skill focused attention on novice and expert putting performance ​ Dual task condition: respond when an auditory rone occurs during swing ​ Skill focused condition: respond when forward movement during swing ends ○​ For novices, skill focused attention led to small performance improvement ○​ For experts, skill focused condition led to worse performance than dual task condition ​ Experts have attention to spare when performing procedure (low cognitive load)  ​ But for experts, paying close attention to performance disrupts execution of their skill ○​ The effects of focused monitoring or control depends on the stage of acquisition ​ During early stages of skill acquisition, skill focused attention is necessary to coordinate and refine complex behavior ​ For experts, skill focused attention can disrupt autonomous execution of a well learned skill ​ Choking under pressure ​ Optimizing practice ○​ Performance during practice ​ Acquisition ○​ Performance at test ​ Retention ​ Near transfer ​ Far transfer ○​ Transfer specificity: the restricted applicability of learned skills to specific situations ​ Generalization of skill learning depends on similarity between conditions during acquisition and test ○​ Practice environments which seem to benefit short term performance (during acquisition) may disrupt long term retention and ability to transfer skills to new conditions ​ Desirable difficulties: effortful learning conditions that slow initial learning but enhance post instruction retention and transfer ○​ How should practice be structured to strengthen long term retention and transfer? ​ Spacing of practice sessions ​ Intermittent external feedback ​ Variable practice conditions ​ Alternating between skills (contextual interference) ​ Spacing ○​ Massed practice leads to rapid short term improvement, but poorer long term performance, then spaced practice ​ Feedback ○​ Knowledge of results: feedback about performance of a skill; critical to the effectiveness of practice ​ External outcome feedback which allows for evaluation of performance and error correction ​ Different from internal monitoring of performance (perception of body position, confidence, etc.)  ○​ Continuous external feedback: performance feedback received after every attempt to perform skill ○​ Intermittent external feedback: performance feedback received after some, but not all, attempts to perform skill ○​ Schmidt, Young, Swinnen, and Shapiro experiment: ​ Participants learned to produce a precise motor movement with a handle ​ Manipulated how often they were given feedback about their accuracy ​ Tested for retention of skill (with no feedback provided) after delays of 10 minutes and 2 days ​ Continuous external feedback leads to faster improvements during training but poorer long term retention than intermittent feedback ○​ Why is continuous feedback less effective for long term performance? ​ Creates over reliance on external feedback that may not be available outside training context ​ Draws attention away from internal monitoring of behavior (the feeling of executing the skill) ​ Variable practice ○​ Constant practice: practice involving a very limited set of materials, conditions, and/or skills ○​ Variable practice: practice involving a variety of materials, conditions, and/or skills ○​ Kerr and Booth trained 8 and 12 year old children to toss a bean bag at a target without looking ​ Constant practice condition: trained at 3 ft distance ​ Variable practice condition: trained ats 2 and 4 ft distances ○​ After training, all children were tested on their ability to hit a target at 3 ft ○​ Despite never training on 3 ft targets, children in variable practice condition had higher accuracy ​ Why variable practice? ○​ Increase similarity between practice and test conditions ​ Test conditions will likely be different from practice conditions, so variable practice decreases reliance on specific practice conditions ○​ Variable practice aids in formation of a motor schema (or motor program): general knowledge for how to relate external task conditions to appropriate sequence of movements ​ Supports performance in novel conditions that were never faced during training ​ Contextual interference ○​ Contextual interference effect: alternating between related tasks during practice (high CI) leads to lower performance during acquisition, but better performance in retention or transfer test, compared to blocked practice (low CI) ○​ Hall Domingues, and Cavavos examined effect of practice schedule on college baseball team, with three hitting tasks: ​ Fastballs, curveballs, change-ups ○​ 3 experimental conditions: ​ Control condition: no extra batting practice ​ Blocked condition: extra batting practice blocked by pitch type ​ Random condition: extra batting practice in random order ○​ Why does contextual interference improve performance? ​ Forces frequent memory retrieval (action plan reconstruction) ​ In blocked practice, once you select a response, you don’t have to retrieve it from memory for subsequent attempts ​ In random practice, get more experience selecting an appropriate response ​ More likely to learn subtle differences between tasks when alternating between them ​ Optimizing practice ○​ Strong evidence for positive long term effects of contextual interference, but not universally beneficial ​ CI might be bad for novices, as high interference (frequent switching) may overwhelm people in early stages of skill acquisition ○​ Optimizing practice for skill learning is an active, important area of research ○​ Desirable difficulties may slow acquisition, but improve long term retention and transfer (particularly when test conditions may differ from practice conditions) ​ Quiz 3 ○​ Tying your shoe is a procedural memory ○​ Learning to hit golf balls in a climate controlled, indoor driving range is a closed perceptual motor skill ○​ Example of being in the cognitive acquisition stage: thinks through the sequence of movements and rehearses instruction ○​ Desirable difficulties produce slower short term learning and better long term performance ○​ Patients with parkinson's disease experience difficulty with motor skill learning due to disrupted processing in the basal ganglia ○​ Muscle memory can be a misleading term because procedural memory resides in the brain