In Outlining the Central Elements of Schmidt’s Schema Theory of Motor Learning, Comment on How It Attempted to Deal with the Shortcomings of Previous Models of Motor Learning.

Three physical changes the infant undergoes includes (1) going from using basic reflexes to learning complex motor skills (e.g. how to crawl and walk); (textbook p. 142; Chapter 4), (2) developing fine motor skills (e.g. precisely reaching and grasping for a toy); (p. 185; Chapter 5), and (3) developing vision, specifically depth perception and pattern perception (e.g. developing the ability to recognize); (pp. 189-193, Chapter 5). These are examples of the dynamic systems theory of motor development as the infant progresses in a sequence.

2. List and describe 2-3 interesting motor developmental concepts from Chapter 5 that were not covered in the video.

An example would be a student who believes all teachers are intimidating and bossy from past experiences, but after having a shy and timid teacher, their view may change their internal schema and stereotype of all teachers being individual. Scientists may want to study the reactions of the student and how he or she will integrate the new schema. Social cognition researchers are also interested to study the regulation of activated schemas. It is widely perceived that the situational activation of schemata is automatic, outside of conscious control. However, the regulation and activation of social schemas is self-regulatory and independently motivated.

Schmidt developed the schema theory to overcome some of the deficiencies with the open and closed loop theories. The schema theory suggests that to perform a skill an athlete needs a generalised motor programme, recall schema, and recogniton schema. A generalised motor programme is the basic movement needed to perform a task. It is the basic ability to kick a soccerball or catch a football. A generalised motor program generates a variety of similar actions that allows the athlete to adapt to each specific circumstance based on previous experiences. For example, during a football game, a wide receiver is able to adapt and catch passes from multiple heights, angles, and

It is important to understand what fine motor skills are before you try to look at activities to try and enhance fine motor development. Fine motor skill is the ability to control the movement of small muscles like your fingers, mouth, tongue, toes, etc. This means that the activities that you need to use have to deal with the control of the small muscles. A good and easy activity you can do with children to enhance their fine motor skills is play with play dough. Rolling and making figures out of play dough helps children with their hand and finger coordination. You could also even incorporate cookie cutters and toy scissors to this activity to make it more interesting. Another activity you can do is have them thread beads or lace. This will

A) Skills Training: The primary motor cortex is made up of interconnected neural assemblies (localized groups of neurons with similar inputs and outputs), that control movements in the fingers, hands, and legs. This coordinated activation can then be made complex and lets us do multijoint movements such as reaching. Before the study the theory was that during skills learning, the connectivity between these neural assemblies change. These changes were viewed as differences in cortical synapse numbers, synaptic strength, and the topography of stimulation-evoked movement representation. They did a study with adult rats to measure these changes while they do an obstacle course. Some rats had to learn limb placement and posture control to finish a complex obstacle course, and the others walked an unobstructed course. The rats that were required to learn limb placement and posture control because of the complex obstacle course, showed increases in synapse number within the motor cortex compare to the rats doing the simple obstacle. The synaptic changes seen here are thought to show the changes in cortical circuitry that results in the reorganization of the neural assemblies encoding movement. Therefore proving the theory correct. All this data indicates that training on a skill produces alterations in the

Schemas can help provide a cue to prompt our memory when coming to recalling information. We will have stored the information in a specific category so that it can be recalled more easily. One example of this is shown in an experiment carried out by John Bransford and Marcia Johnson (1972). Participants were read a passage which described in detail the process of washing clothes, however they were not told that the title was ‘washing clothes’. Many of the participants found that they had difficulty in understanding the passage and were unable to recall the details. However once the participants were given the title to the passage, this provided the schema which helped them to recall the information more easily.

The psychomotor domain includes physical movement, coordination, and use of the motor-skill areas (“University of Connecticut”, n.d.). There are five levels: imitation, manipulation, precision, articulation, and naturalization. Imitation is to replicate an action of another; observe and mirror the action. Manipulation is recreating an activity from instruction or memory. Precision is performing a skill reliably, independent of help, and the action is quick, smooth, and accurate. Articulation is adapting and articulating competence to satisfy a new context or task. Naturalization is instinctive, effortless and unconscious mastery of an activity and related skills at a strategic level.

Do you remember how you learned how to ride a bike, read a book, or read a book? These and many more activities you are allowed to do are all cause of procedural memory. Procedural memory are the motor skills that you have developed from repeated times. These things, such as walking, talking, eating, start when you are born. You do these motor skills and actions so much that they become more of a habit and you do not notice that you are actually do them. People do not stop and say to their selves “Remember to breath, in, then out” or “to walk, you put your right foot out first, then your left”. That would make life a little more difficult than it already is. Humans and animals can learn with feedback. For example, when we start driving, we will learn the amount of pressure we have to put on the peddle for the car not to go to fast or too slow. “Perceptual learning training with feedback is not formally different from that experienced by a rat required to choose between a triangle and circle, say, when one of these is followed by a given outcome (e.g., access to food) and one is not. Contemporary associative theories of animal discrimination learning (e.g., that proposed by Rescorla & Wagner, 1972) provide an explanation of such learning” (Mitchell & Hall, 2014). Another habit we have as humans are is superstitious learning. Superstitious learning is “actions performed even when there is no causal relationship between the action and its consequences” (Eichenbaum, 2008). For

The way we process new information is, to a significant extent, determined by prior experience and knowledge stored in our memory. These memories are organized by schemas. Schemas are cognitive structures for organizing information about the world, events, people, and actions. Schemas are needed help us save time and reduce our minds’ workloads when interpreting the ample amount of information in the world. However, schemas may affect our memory and make us concentrate on things that affirm our pre-existing beliefs only. Schemas also affect stereotypes and make it difficult to retain completely new information.

All four types of cognitive schemata are used to organize perception in a way that is understood. I find that script, prototype and person construct are used the most out of the four types of schemata for myself consciously. Stereotype is often used when judging others, typically outside of the friendship category. They are the ideas that I wouldn’t want to see in my friends.

The first key principle of learning physical skills is motor skills. A motor skill is an activity that involves voluntary muscular movement with the correct degree of muscular control to complete a complex predetermined task. In out learning stage we use gross, fine, open and closed motor skills. Gross motor involves movements of large muscles and the whole body, an example of this is a jump smash in badminton. Whereas Fine motor requires greater precision in small muscles. For instance,

The theory that there is in fact two stages of memory, short term and long term first came

These physical behaviours are learned through repetitive practice. A learner’s ability to perform these skills is based on precision, speed, distance, and technique. Learners’ general objectives would be to writes smoothly and legibly; accurately reproduces a picture, operates a computer skilfully,

In order to answer the second question, the present study has employed the schema theory from the realm of social cognition, but of course without separating itself from the concept of thematic perspectivization. Crucially, the three different types of schema, person, self-, and role, were theoretically and analytically presented to be compatible with the three components of thematic perspectivization: perspectivizee, perspectivizer, and perspectivized, respectively. In the data analysis, new information, appearing as part of Rheme structure, proved to linguistically mark or cue related schemas; hence, the principle of meta-schematic information can be said to be inseparable from thematic perspectivization both in theory and in practice. Indeed, the information about the