Motor Behavior

Chapter 6
Goals of Motor Behavior

To understand how motor skills are learned,

how processes such as _________ and
_______ improve learning and performance
of skills, and how response selection and
execution become more efficient and
effective
To understand how motor skills are ________,
how the neuromuscular system functions to
coordinate the muscles and limbs for body
movement, and how ____________ and
__________ factors affect mechanisms of
response selection and ___________
To understand how the learning and control
of motor skills change across the life span,
improving in youth and deteriorating with
aging
Why Use Motor
Behavior?
• The study of how motor skills are learned,
controlled, and developed across the life span
• Applications often focus on what, how, and how
much to practice
• Guides us in providing better situations for
learning and practice, including the selection of
effective _____ and _________.
• Valuable to performers and those who teach
motor skills (e.g., physical education teachers,
adapted physical educators, gerontologists,
physical therapists, and coaches)
 1.Motor _________ (acquisition of skilled movements as a result of practice)
2.Motor control (the ______, _______, and __________aspects of
Subdisciplines of movement)
Motor Behavior 3.Motor development (__________ view of motor learning and motor
control across a _____ ______)
Contrasting
Motor Learning
& Motor Control
• Shift from learning a skill versus
“automatic” skill
• Motor control essential for every
movement—from poorly skilled
to well skilled
• Motor learning responsible for
shift to well skilled

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Motor Development
Fine vs. Gross Motor Skills

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 Motor Movements
Beyond Sport
• Babies learning to use a fork and spoon
• Dentists learning to control drill while looking in a mirror
• Surgeons controlling a scalpel; microsurgeons using laser
• Children learning to ride a bicycle or to roller skate
• Teenagers learning to drive
• Dancers performing choreographed movements
• Pilots learning to control an airplane
• Children learning to control a pencil or type on a keyboard

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A Clinical
Perspective...
• Adapted Movement Educators,
PT, OT, and ATs use gross and
fine motor skills with
____________ to improve
certain movements.
 Research Methods for Motor
Behavior
• Types of studies (experimental designs)
• ________ group
• Within group
• _________ (participants receive no treatment)
• Studying the early stages of learning (novel tasks)
• Studying expert performers
• Measuring movements (___________)
• Movement task characteristics (__________ vs. _________)
• Measuring learning and transfer (__________ and ________)
Novel Learning
Tasks
• Ensure that no participant has tried the task before.
• Tasks tend to be simple.
• Allows us to study improvement and how
movements are learned.
• However, limits what researcher can learn; this
approach studies outcome of the movement (the
product) rather than nature of the movement (the
process).
• _______ learning experiments are not helpful for
physical activity tasks in which performers have had
many trials.
Studying
Expert
Performers
• What do expert performers do during
practice and competition? How does it
differ from novices?
• Decision making
• Skill
• Game-performance variables
• ____________ and skills of sport are often
highly specific to that sport.
• Information helps us understand how
learning occurs across many other skills.
Information
Processing
• Concept formed to help scientists
understand how the central nervous
system works.
• Conceptualizes brain as a computer,
master controller.
• Commands sent from brain through
_______ _______, which reduces
complexity of information for the muscles
and muscle groups.
• Goal of motor behavior is to explain
response selection and response
execution.
 Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Feedback
• ___________ -sensory information from performer's own sensory
system (sight, hearing, smell, proprioception) -normally occurs when
individuals produce movement
• Extrinsic feedback: Knowledge of results (the _______) and
knowledge of performance (how well the performer played)
• Ex: Watching performance on video, listening to coach's comments, final
score in a game)
 Motor Learning
• Goal: Understanding the role of practice, feedback (intrinsic and
extrinsic), and individual differences
• Before practice: goal setting, instructions, modeling, and mental
practice
• For effective learning, extrinsic feedback should be corrective, be
something the learner could not gather on his/her own, be provided
on about ½ of the trials, and be followed by time to make
corrections.
• Skill acquisition variables versus performance variables
 Motor Control

• Motor programs are proposed ___________mechanisms that allow movements to be

controlled.

• As motor programs are developed, they become more automatic, allowing the
performer to concentrate on how to use the movement in performance situations. This
perspective is also called schema theory.

• Dynamical systems theory has challenged the motor program theory. Dynamical
systems theorists believe that a more direct link (coordinated structure) exists between
perception and action, bypassing the need for motor programs.

• Importance of motor control is clear for professionals in physical education, physical

therapy, or athletic training.

• Motor control often is not intuitive; easily misunderstood.

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Motor Control
Areas of Study
• ___________ ____ __________: Coordination of movement (there
are multiple ways for humans or animals to perform a movement in
order to achieve the same goal- Ex: Multiple elbow rotations and
muscles involved are degrees of freedom in movement coordination)
• Motor equivalency- Ability to use different movements produced by
different parts of the body to perform a task under different
conditions
• Serial order of movements: Sequencing and timing of movement
behaviors
• __________integration during movement- integrating visual input
into organized collection of surfaces and objects
• Skill _________
Pop Quiz
Question 1
Motor learning and motor control, which share a common
goal of understanding human movement, are areas of
research within the subdiscipline of _____________.
a. motor behavior
b. exercise physiology
c. personal training
d. kinesiology
Question 2

Understanding how the brain and nervous system

adjust during childhood and as we get older is a key
area of research in:
a. Motor behavior
b. Movement
c. Motor Growth
d. Motor Development
 Question 3
In order to study how beginners learn new motor skills, motor
behaviorists create simple and ____________ tasks for use in
experiments.
a. familiar
b. fun
c. novel
 Question 4
• Researchers who study how motor skills are
acquired must also study how well skills are
____________ and how they transfer to other
situations.
a. executed
b. retained
c. learned
d. trained

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Question 5

Difficult to observe and measure,

motor learning is a relatively
permanent internal state that requires
__________ to occur.
a. Skill
b. Practice
c. Perseverance
d. Conditioning
Question 6
• Feedback supplied by another
person (coach, teacher, or
trainer) about the outcome of a
movement is called
____________.
a. Execution
b. Positive
c. Knowledge of results
d. Knowledge of performance