Theories of Learning
What is learning:
learning is defined by the Oxford Dictionary (2013) as the ability to process information or skills from studying, experiences and being taught through a stimuli or stimuli's, such as someone doing a advanced skill, you will take in a a lot of information.
What is performance?
performance is defined by Graham (2013) in the class notes that performance is the act of creating a movement such as a motor skill, the performance of someone can be altered due to the situation they are in or the motivation to do it, performance is also based around quality and can be judged such as making a pass. it can either be good and successful, good but unsuccessful, bad and successful or bad and unsuccessful.
Motor programme and control:
What is a motor programme?
A motor programme is a set of instructions that has been made up, or has been stored in the long term memory stores from previous experiences that allow us to perform an action, the motor programme will be sent down from the brain down to the relevant muscles ready for the motor control to take action.
What is the motor control?
The motor control is what actually allows us to perform a movement, this control system is what decided when we should perform the movement as when this time comes the motor control will send impulses down to these muscles where the motor programme has been stored and the muscles will perform the movement.
There are three major theories that describes how motor control and motor programmes work and they are:
- Open loop theory
- Closed loop theory
- Schmidt's schema theory
Open loop control theory
This theory explains movement patterns that are small and simple yet rapid movements that are more of an autonomous nature as the movements you produce are unconscious due to practice and it becoming second nature and therefore all of the information you have is sent to the muscles as you don't need think about them whilst you do them, as the action is rapid there is no feedback from your senses and you rely on external feedback, the movements that this theory describes are things like the process of kicking or catching a ball.
Closed loop control theory
This theory explains basically the opposite to the open loop theory as it concentrates on ongoing movements rather than simple and rapid movements, this theory says that only the relevant information to the movement that is produced needs to be used when doing the action, the rest is sent back to the long term memory. You will also be able to use external information to help you when doing this action as the movement is continuous and the environment will change and therefore you can use internal feedback to help you.
Schmidt's schema theory
This theory states that all of the information that you need to produce a movement is already stored in the long term memory. and differs from the open and closed loop theories as Schmidt thinks that motor programmes are changeable due to the situation that you occur in rather than recalling on one for a specific movement.
this theory works on two stages:
- recall schema
- recognition schema
Recall schema:
this is before you have performed the movement and you need to come up with the action required for this specific movement, this is where you take in all of the external factors such as in football, you would take into consideration where all of the players are, what surface you are playing on, the weather and the decisions available.
once you have done this the next stage is where you need to choose what you need to do, for example when making a pass, you will need to think about the speed of the pass, the direction of the pass, and the technique such as a straight pass to his feet, or do i have to curl it around a player.
Recognition schema:
This is the feedback from the movement and the process of changing a movement, for this to be able to change a movement you must first know what the outcomes are of a movement is and all of the sensory feedback such as was it a natural movement and did it go well.
Cognitive learning theory
This theory explains that we are using mental mechanisms to help us process and interpret incoming information, once we do this our brain can then choose an action required that has been collected by the conscious brain and once done can be recalled on, this is done by similar process to the information processing models, where we get the information, interpret what we receive and then use the relevant information where it is then stored in the long term memory and can be recalled on later.
Social learning theory
In this theory, Albert Bandura (1977) says that behaviour and movements are learnt from the environment through a process where we visually learn. this is because we all watch others and the way they behave, and the things they do and record these details in our long term memory stores.
The reasons that we learn from this theory is because once we have watched someone and the way they act, we store this information and we can then use this information to copy that behaviour, such as in football, Cristiano Ronaldo's run up when taking a freekick was widely noticed and then other footballers tried to imitate it as it was very successful for Cristiano Ronaldo.
This theory is also more relevant to the younger population as they have many areas where they can model such as there personality, there attitude and behaviour, what sport to play and what role in sport they want and if there was something new then they would try to copy it as it, this doesnt really apply as much to the elder population as when we get older these areas such as personality, attitude and what sports we do is already set and are harder to change.
Drive reduction theory
this is a theory that explains that there is a direct link between arousal and performance and where arousal increases so will performance.
The process of this starts with a a need or a goal which will create a 'Drive', and the level of importance this goal is to you will determine your drive to complete it, this goal will increase your motivation and arousal to achieve it and therefore when you achieve the goal you will have relief and the motivation drops until a new goal is set and this process will repeat over and over again for each goal however the motivation and drive that you have will effect the period of time it takes.
Thorndike's laws
Thorndike's law of effect was based on the theories of conditioning, classical conditioning and operant conditioning, he used these two theories to create a simple experiment with animals, usually cats, this experiment included a maze like box where there was a level to step on for the maze to open, but to make there an incentive for the cat he put a fish on the plate at the end, the first time this experiment was conducted the cat took a really long time and finally stumbled on the lever, after many tries the cat found that the lever was the key to getting the fish and therefore got quicker and quicker at finding and stepping on the lever.
Thorndike, E. L. (1898). Animal intelligence: An experimental study of the associative processes in animals. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 2(4), i-109.
From this experiment Thorndike's created the idea of the 'law of effect', Thorndike's (1898) stated that any behaviour that is followed by a good consequence is likely to be repeated, where as any behaviour that is followed by a bad consequence is likely to be stopped. for example in football, when a player dives to gain a free-kick and gets booked for it, they will stop diving, however if someone was to dive and gain a freekick or penalty then they are more than likely to do it again.
Law of Exerices:
this is based on two different outcomes: firstly is law of use and law of disuse, the law of use explains that is an action has a positive outcome then the action will be repeated, such as as player taking a person on, the next time they come together he will try and take them on again, the law of disuse is when an action has a negative outcome and the action is weakened, using the same example if someone was to try and take someone on and get tackled, they would second guess doing it the next time.
Law of recency:
this law is based on the time of the actions that you have produced and says that the most recent action that you have taken in that situation is more than likely be the same one to occur if that situation happened again.
Law of multi response:
this Law is based on an action that has many desicions to choose from and that we work through them using the trial and error technique, an example of this would be practising a pass, if the pass isn't reaching the right target you would keep practising and work out what was wrong so you can change it.
Set of attitude:
this law is based on the fact that everyone is taught in a different ways, this means that people often situate an action to have a specific outcome from previous experiences.
Prepotency of elements:
this is the different areas in a situation that will get noticed and will be focused on depending on the different areas that need to be looked at by the person, such as watching how someone strikes a ball, rather than watching there run up.
Response of analogue:
this law says that when you are in a situation that you can relate to you will use pre-experiences of similar situations to help you overcome it
Law of readiness:
this law says that the act of learning is due to the readiness of the person, this will help an athlete develop there reaction times when being presented with a situation as they will be ready to do something again.
Conditioning
there are two different types of conditioning;
- classical conditioning
- operant conditioning
classical conditioning
this is where there is a relation between one stimuli and another, such as using a scientist example of poulars dogs, his method was to ring a bell at feeding time for his pet dogs and then provide the dog with food, after a period of time, whenever the dogs heard the bell ring they would instantly salivate as they are perceiving food to be on the way even if there wasn't. and example of this in sports would be when you get chosen for the starting eleven in a football match each week, this stimuli would set off your anticipationry response and increase your heart rate for exercise.
Operant conditioning
this is where there is a relation between someone's behaviour and there consequences, there are four main outcomes which are:
positive reinforcement
this is where the behaviour is good and the consequence is positive, so for example, when a professional athlete is on form and they are scoring nearly every game, the positive consequence might be the crowd chanting there name and therefore giving the player higher morale, they could have a increase in performance or they could have a bonus in there pay, there is a lot of consequences of having positive behaviours.
negative reinforcement
this is where the behaviour is negative and therefore the consequence is negative, for example when a rugby player does an ilegal foul and the referee warms them if they do it again they will be sin-binned, this will allow the referee to calm the player down and create a positive outcome from the situation as the athlete knows that they cannot do it again and needs to stop or he will have to face the consequences
negative punishment
this is where the behaviour is negative and therefore the consequence is negative punishment, using the same example of a rugby player when does an illegal foul, but this time he gets away with it during the match, the consequence would be the governing body taking responsibility and banning that player for a set amount of games and therefore the athlete has had his availability to play rugby taken away from them due to a negative behaviour.
positive punishment
this is where the bad behaviour ends and and therefore positive punishment is given this is can be used in sports when.
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