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Lecture 9 - Measuring Motor Learning

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26 views30 pages

Lecture 9 - Measuring Motor Learning

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christopherapplication20
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© © All Rights Reserved
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HSE 422 Lecture 9:

Measuring Motor Learning

Rob Gray
What learning is (a reminder)

• a relatively permanent change in


behaviour
• Increase the capacity to perform a skill in
the future
• involves an increase in knowledge and
production of new memories
KEY Message from this lecture:

Performance in Practice  Learning


“Improved performance” through training
has multiple components...

• Improved muscular strength, endurance,


flexibility, etc...
• Perceptual attunement to different sensory
cues
• Development of coordinated movement
patterns
• Strategy, decision making
Factors that influence learning
• Type of skill:
Open vs closed loop
• Depends on which aspect of performance you are
trying to optimize:
Speed vs accuacy
Constant Error vs Variable Error
Reduction of catastropic mistakes..
**Need to identify key performance dependent variable
beforehand
Learning is more than just speed and
accuracy
• Consistency/variability
• Efficiency
• Attentional-load
• Flexibility
How do you demonstrate learning has
occurred?
Goal of Most Learning Studies
To understand which independent variables
(IV) are involved in maximizing (or impairing)
learning and which have no effect whatsoever
Typical IV’s:
Different types of equipment
Practice protocols etc
Measuring Performance During
Practice
• Most common method
used to evaluate learning
• Problem #1: Performance
Curves NOT Learning
Curves
• Show how well you do
something in the present,
not your capability for doing
it in the future
E.g., Conditions that lead to the best performance in
practice may not lead to the best learning

• Blocked vs Random
practice
• Perfect practice does not
make perfect
E.g., often get poorer
performance in practice
for Random training but
better learning
Why can performance during training/practice
be so different from learning effects?
1) Many factors that influence
performance other than learning
• Transient factors that don’t reflect learning (i.e.,
don’t involve acquisition of knowledge/construction
of new memories). Examples:
Fatigue (muscle, central)
• decrease in response can be part of learning (e.g., habituation)
Arousal/alertness
Motivation
Mood
2) Design of Training Task
Ceiling and Floor Effects
• Measurement of
performance gets
increasingly less sensitive
as performer gets closer to
the top or bottom end of a
scale.
Also becomes increasingly
more difficult to improve
Task Difficulty Effects
• The shape of performance
curves are as much
dependent on the task used
to assess performance as
they are on sensorimotor
learning
Expressions like “The
Learning Curve is steep” are
pretty meaningless
Interpreting Performance Curves
• Difficult to make absolute statements
about learning (e.g., method A lead to 3x
the amount of learning compared to
method B) because will be dependent on
performance measure used
• Can really only make relative statements
(method A lead to more learning than
method B)
Implication:
• Performance changes that occur during practice
may not be best indicators of learning
These effects can contaminate attempts to study
learning
• E.g., if an athlete moves their eyes around less is it the
“Quiet Eye” effect (learning) or just eye muscle fatigue?
Loss of Individual Differences
Problem #2: Do not capture
individual differences (i.e.,
between subject variability)
• Typically show the mean
(average) results for a set of
subjects, some may have
improved a lot while others
not at all
Within Subject Variability
Problem #3: Do not capture
consistency in
performance(i.e., within
subject variability)
• While, on average,
performance may get better
there can be a lot of ups and
downs.
Pre-training differences
• Problem #4 - When two groups start out at
different performance levels it makes it very
difficult to interpret learning effects

Which group learned


the skill better?
Pre-training differences

• Avoid at all costs in training research!


Can be minimized by matching groups as much as
possible on all other relevant variables (e.g,. Same #
of males and females, same age range, etc).
Distinction between measuring
performance and measuring learning

• Sensorimotor learning is not something we


can directly measure
Must be inferred by choosing a set of
performance tests and observing how the
results of these change over time
Poorly chosen performance tests can be
insensitive to learning
Metacogntion during training
• Individuals are often unable to effectively
judge how learning is going because they
base their judgment on performance
E.g., participants in blocked training are
overconfident about performing a transfer test
Could lead to motivation problems in learning
Other ways to measure learning
• Retention tests
Most of the effects described above are transient
and/or wear off after a period of rest (while
learning if anything gets stronger)
If we re-test sometime after training ended (e.g.,
24 hrs, 3 months) it is unlikely these factors will
still have an influence
Other ways to measure learning
• Secondary Tasks
Ask athlete to perform an attentionally-demanding
secondary task at the same time as the main skill of
interest
• Counting backwards by 3, detecting extraneous signals
As we have discussed, learning is associated with an
increase in automaticity
• Therefore, if an athlete can perform a secondary task better
we can infer they have learned the main skill better.
Overlearning
• Definition: Continuing to practice after a
particular criterion for success has already
been reached
• Based on performance this seems to be a
waste of time since nothing is changing
• But...can improve other aspects of learning...
Effort & Efficiency
• Although two groups have the same
performance level there may be differences in
the effort required to produce that level
E.g., one group might be giving 110% while another
is taking it easy
• Efficiency
O2 consumption, heart rate, pupil dilation, EMG
Transfer and Generalizability
• How well do the skills you have learned
apply to different situation or different
skills?
Higher transfer/generalizability = better
learning (sometimes!)
Summary
• Problems with using performance (learning)
curves as a measure of learning
1. Many transient factors that can influence
performance during training that don’t reflect
learning
2. Highly sensitive to task design
3. Don’t capture between and within subject
variability
4. Hard to take into account pre-training differences
Summary
• Alternative (better) ways to measure
learning
Retention tests
Secondary task conditions
Assessment of effort and efficiency
Transfer tests

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