IB Sports, exercise and health science C.2.1.1 Learning as a Process Leading to a Relatively Permanent Behavioral Change Notes

Skill

It is not something that happens naturally or without purpose. Instead, skills involve learned movements that serve a predetermined function.

1. Goal-Oriented: Skills are performed to achieve a specific outcome (e.g., typing a letter, making a golf putt, or saving a goal in soccer).
2. Performed with Maximum Certainty: A skilled performer can consistently achieve success (e.g., maintaining balance while cycling or making 90% of basketball shots).
3. Efficient Use of Energy: Skilled actions are performed with minimal energy expenditure (e.g., steering a car, maintaining streamlined form in swimming, or skiing smoothly downhill).
4. Learned Through Practice: Skills require experience, repetition, and feedback from a teacher or coach to develop proficiency.

Types of Skills

1. Motor Skill: Focuses on movement with minimal cognitive involvement.
   1. Examples: weightlifting, sprint racing, wrestling.
2. Cognitive Skill: Requires significant thinking and decision-making rather than movement.
   1. Examples: playing chess, understanding rules and strategies in soccer and field hockey.
3. Perceptual Skill: Involves interpreting sensory information to make decisions.
   1. Examples: reading the green in golf, assessing a rock face before climbing.

Ability vs. Skill

1. Ability is innate and inherited (perceptual & motor attributes).
2. Skill is learned through practice with a specific goal.
3. Types of Abilities:
   1. Perceptual-motor abilities: helps process information on movement (e.g., tennis player's coordination for a forehand).
   2. Motor abilities: relate to physical movement (e.g., speed & strength for a 100m sprint).
4. Key Formula:
   1. To perform skillfully, one must possess the necessary abilities and select the correct technique for the situation, represented in the formula:
      1. Formula: Skill = Ability + Selection of the Correct Technique

Principles of Skill Learning

1. Performance is transitory, meaning it varies from attempt to attempt.
   1. Example: A beginner golfer may sink a putt by chance, but this does not indicate mastery.
2. Learning is evident when a skill can be performed consistently and accurately.
   1. Example: An experienced golfer's putts are clustered around the hole, demonstrating learned precision.

Factors Contributing to Inter- and Intra-Individual Differences in the Rate of Learning

1. Physical Demands

1. Some skills require a certain level of physical ability that individuals may not have yet.

2. Physical Maturation

1. An individual may be physically mature but still lack the fitness level required for a task.
2. In such cases, physical training is needed before skill acquisition.

3. Motivation

1. The most important factor affecting learning.
   1. A learner must have a desire to improve.
   2. Motivation is closely linked to physical maturation, as individuals tend to learn when they feel ready.

4. Readiness for Learning

1. Learners generally recognize when they are prepared to acquire a new skill.

Approaches to Motor Learning

Competing Models of Motor Learning

1. Information Processing Model: treats the brain like a computer that takes input, stores it, processes it, and produces output. Schema theory is its best-known example.
2. Ecological Model: Rooted in ecological dynamics theory, focusing on how individuals interact with their environment to learn movements.

Traditional Linear Pedagogy

1. Follows the information processing theory of learning.
2. Learning progresses linearly through cognitive stages (cognitive to associative to autonomous).
3. As movement proficiency improves, cognitive processing demands decrease during performance.
4. Skills should be broken down into simple components for effective learning.
5. Characterized by a teacher-centered approach, where instruction is structured and guided.

Welford's Information-Processing Model

1. The model has three processing stages: sensation, perception, and decision, followed by efferent organisation of the motor response.
2. Exteroceptors (vision, hearing) gather outside-world information while interoceptors (vestibular apparatus, joint receptors, muscle spindles) gather inside-body information.
3. Signal Detection Theory (Swets) explains how athletes pick the relevant signal out of background noise, and detection improves when the signal is intense compared with noise and arousal is at an optimal level.
4. Short-term memory is limited to about seven items and is lost within seconds if not rehearsed.
5. Long-term memory has no capacity limit but retrieval can be unreliable.
6. Selective attention filters relevant information for processing, supported by past experience stored in long-term memory.

Phases of Learning (Fitts and Posner)

1. Cognitive phase relies heavily on working memory and verbal labels (such as "pull, brake, switch, slide" for belaying), and movement looks crude and inconsistent.
2. Associative phase sees the learner refine the general idea with practice, with movement becoming smoother and more consistent.
3. Autonomous phase runs with very little conscious thought so the athlete can attend to tactics, opponents, or environmental cues instead of the movement itself.

Response Time, Reaction Time, and Hick's Law

1. Response time is the total time from stimulus to completed action.
2. Reaction time is stimulus to start of response, while movement time is start to end of response.
3. Training improves movement time more than reaction time.
4. Hick's Law states that as the number of stimulus-response choices doubles, reaction time grows linearly against the logarithm of the choices.

Open-Loop and Closed-Loop Control

1. Open-loop control drives movements too fast for feedback such as a boxer's straight left punch (60-70 ms to target), using a pre-set motor programme.
2. Closed-loop control allows slower movements such as a slow tennis return to be altered while they happen, using Adams's perceptual trace to compare what is happening to what should be happening.

Schema Theory and Generalised Motor Patterns

1. A schema is a set of generalised rules for a family of movements.
2. Recall schema handles the choice and initiation of action.
3. Recognition schema handles the feel of the movement so changes can be made along the way.
4. Generalised motor patterns are fundamental movement patterns such as running, jumping, throwing, kicking, and striking.
5. Subordinate motor patterns are sport-specific refinements of those patterns, such as a baseball swing as a refinement of striking.

Non-Linear Pedagogy: A Flexible and Adaptive Approach to Motor Learning

1. Developed based on ecological dynamics approach.
2. Encourages exploratory learning and individualized movement solutions.
3. Skills should be practiced in realistic performance contexts to capture dynamic learning.
4. Teachers modify constraints (individual, task, environmental) to facilitate learning.
5. Involves a learner-centered approach, allowing athletes to develop skills through exploration.

Key Concepts of Non-Linear Pedagogy

1. Ecological Systems Theory

1. This theory views learning as a dynamic interaction between the individual and their environment.
2. It emphasizes the role of perception-action coupling, where athletes continuously adapt their movements based on environmental cues.
3. Perception and action are coupled: the way an athlete perceives the world shapes how they act, and how they act changes what they perceive next.
4. Affordances are opportunities for action that the environment offers, and athletes can act on them without consciously processing every cue.

2. Dynamical Systems Theory

1. This theory explains how complex systems (like the human body) self-organize to produce coordinated movements.
2. It highlights the concept of degrees of freedom, referring to the many ways the body can move.
3. Degrees of freedom: the body has far more independent dimensions of movement (joints, muscles, limbs) than any single movement actually needs.
4. Self-organisation works across timescales of performance (milliseconds to minutes), learning (hours to weeks), and expertise (months to years).

3. Performance Variability

1. Unlike traditional approaches that seek consistency, non-linear pedagogy values variability as a tool for learning.
2. Practicing under different conditions helps athletes develop adaptable skills.

4. Self-Organization

1. Athletes naturally find efficient solutions to movement challenges without explicit instructions.
2. This process is influenced by personal, task, and environmental constraints.

5. Constraints-Led Approach

1. Coaches manipulate constraints to guide learning:
   1. Individual constraints: Height, strength, or fatigue.
   2. Task constraints: Rules, equipment size, or goals.
   3. Environmental constraints: Weather, surface type, or crowd noise.

Practical Applications of Non-Linear Pedagogy

1. Designing Representative Learning Environments: Practice should mimic real-game conditions to enhance skill transfer.

2. Encouraging Exploration and Problem-Solving: Athletes are given freedom to discover solutions, fostering creativity and adaptability.

3. Emphasizing Contextual Learning: Skills are taught within the context of the sport, rather than in isolation.

Comparing Linear and Non-Linear Pedagogy

1. Linear pedagogy frames learning as a separate process that precedes performing and uses blocked drills that strip context away to focus on technique.
2. Non-linear pedagogy treats learning and performing as the same process and uses varied, game-like practice that keeps context in.
3. Most modern coaching blends the two: linear methods for safety, technical foundations, or rebuilding after injury, and non-linear methods for transferable, decision-rich skill development.