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An athletic trainer's artwork: procedural memory

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An athletic trainer's artwork: procedural memory

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One of the many skills we learn before even applying to the athletic training program is taping, ankles in specific. At first, taping the perfect ankle seemed like a daunting task. There's very specific components to the process that need to be included, and done correctly, every time you tape an ankle. The rest of the ankle is up to you to add your own personal touch.

When my class was fist learning the steps of taping an ankle, we were very reliant on them and followed them one by one. One specific component of the tape job is called a heel lock, and it is the heart and soul of the support given by the tape. The heel lock follows a patterned motion around the ankle and it took us quite awhile to get it down. We were constantly stopping and thinking about the next step while practicing. We were considered novices in this task and could accurately describe what we were doing, especially if someone were to ask us what a heel lock is. We were able to accurately describe the process of making a heel lock because the information was stored in our declarative memory. Now that we are experts in ankle taping (okay they still may not look that great, but they're done efficiently and correctly), the information has moved from our declarative memory to our procedural memory.

Procedural memory is unconscious and automatic, meaning you don't think about the words associated with what you're doing, you just simply do it. Some will use the term "muscle memory" to describe this. We've taped so many ankles that the process is just something we do without thinking about it, one, after the next, after the next. At this point, if someone were to ask me to list the components of ankle taping, I would be able able to tell them. Pre-spray, heel and lace pads, pre wrap, stretch wrap, anchor strips, 3 stirrups, 2 full heel locks, closing strips. But, if they were to ask me to describe how exactly these components are done, I don't think I would be able to. Especially trying to describe a heel lock. This is called "choking under pressure" and results when "experts attempt to harness declarative memories in the execution of a skill that has long since been encoded in procedural form." If you gave me a roll of tape, I would be able to preform a heel lock in a heart beat. I need to be able to use my hands to recall what I need to do to preform the task. This is different from novices, who wouldn't necessarily be able to preform the task with their hands, but would be able to explain it all.

The picture below is of me practicing on my roommate's ankle last spring. This is when the process of ankle taping was still in my declarative memory and it took a lot of practice for me to physically do it. Ignore my face, I wasn't ready for this beautiful moment in life to be captured.

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Road rage, impatience, or both: temporal anticipation 

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Road rage, impatience, or both: temporal anticipation 

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Growing up in the country, I'm used to wide open spaces and an empty highway. Slow moving traffic and stop lights were never things I truly learned how to deal with until moving to Madison for college. However, if one good thing has come out of this in my 3 1/2 years of living downtown, it's that I learned the timing of the stoplights while driving down W Johnson. Specifically, after I turn left onto Johnson at a green light (not arrow) off of Charter.

I know that as soon as I turn left, I am going to come to red light a block down at the intersection of Mills St. Watching the lights for the drivers on Mills St, just like most driver's learn at any intersection, I know that as soon as their light turns red, mine will turn green in 3 seconds. Because I know when the green light is coming, as this is a routine route for me, I'm usually the first one to move again compared to the drivers in the other lanes. This occurrence can be explained by temporal anticipation, which states; "if the responder can anticipate when the stimulus is going to arrive, large reductions in reaction time can be made." The red light at the other stoplight serves as my warning for when my green light will come. Because of regularity, I know how long the fore period will last until my stimulus arrives.

I chose this meme because whenever I'm at this set of lights, I feel like I'm a step ahead of the other drivers. To me, it's a little bit of a race to see who can get going first.

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My first zumba class: degrees of freedom freezing 

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My first zumba class: degrees of freedom freezing 

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YIKES. This is an awful memory to look back on. Growing up, I was not a graceful child nor was I one who was involved in sports of the arts. To this day, I am still not a very graceful and coordinated person. These factors severely prevented me from knowing what the heck I was doing during my first Zumba class.

This class was 50 minutes of constant movement of more than one body part at a time. We were expected to watch the instructor dancing and moving to an upbeat song and reciprocate her movements immediately, as there was no stopping her from continuing on. I found myself either focusing on the upper extremity or lower extremity at one time. While I was mastering what my feet were supposed to be doing, my arms couldn't keep up and fell into an awkward half doing the motion, half looking like I was frantically waving down someone across the room type of phase. I could not simultaneously control both the extremities.This phenomenon (or should I say catastrophe) can be explained by degrees of freedom freezing.

DOF freezing occurs when the body naturally stiffens up while learning new movement patterns. By stiffening up, the degrees of freedom are limited and there are not as many specific movements that need to be controled, which makes the movement easier. As a person gets better at the new pattern, they will start to loosen up. As they loosen, the degrees of freedom start to "unfreeze." The more degrees of freedom that are unfreezing, the better the movement pattern looks and the more successful the person is in achieving the specific movements.

In terms of my Zumba class, I would start to "unfreeze" towards the end of each song. This is because I was repetitively practicing the movement pattern. I would master the basic movement, such as the order of direction that I had to move the arm. After that, I would start to add specific motions in each direction, unfreezing a new degree of freedom. After that, I would be able to tie it together with what was going on in my feet and (hopefully) create one universal and smooth movement pattern. But then, before I knew it, the song would end and I would have to start all over again with a new song and a new movement pattern.

I was the lady in the red shirt:

As you can see, she is able to reciprocate the correct movements in her left arm, but her right arm, hips, and legs cannot keep up and fall into an awkward and stiff movement.

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Clinal experience as an athletic training student: visual search

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Clinal experience as an athletic training student: visual search

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Being an athletic trainer has been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember. I couldn't even begin to explain the amount of nerves, excitement, and pure fear I felt the first day I started the program working fall football camp. Between the 18 of us, we were an anxious bunch of stress balls trying to figure out how football practice worked, where we needed to be, and where in the world our position groups were running off to next. It was one big cluster of us frantically running across the field, not having the slightest clue what exactly was going on. As the long August days continued on, we started to get a feel for the practice drills, where certain positions would be on the field, and where we needed to be as an athletic training student. Once I got comfortable with the chaos of practice, my next question was, "how do I pay attention to every single guy, monitoring their actions for any suspected injury? How in the world do my preceptors see something happen from across the field before I even blink?" Music is blaring, coaches are screaming, guys are dancing, football's are flying. I can't even begin to count the amount of stimuli I could choose to react to during any given practice.

It is evident that my clinical preceptors are experts in visual search. Visual search is defined as the "process of directing visual attention to locate relevant environmental cues." Despite all of the stimuli going on around them, they know what's important to pay attention to, and which isn't. Because of this, they can see an injury happening from a mile away. Meanwhile, our novice selves are still so fixated on following the numbers on the players backs to ensure we keep up with our position group. We're fixated on our guys, and only our guys. I'm with defensive backs and your tight end dropped right next to me? Sorry, I didn't notice.

This picture shows athletic trainers preforming an on field evaluation of an injured athlete, meanwhile, I would be the trainer standing in the background still holding onto my water bottle, fixating on my position group.

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Student by day, waitress by night: working memory 

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Student by day, waitress by night: working memory 

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First things first. Working as a waitress in this crazy college town demands more skill than I could ever even begin to compare to learning a new sport, especially on game days. The list goes on and on, really. Yes, it is ridiculously hard to keep a smile on your face as your table "wants their cheese curds brought out exactly 3 minutes before their meal with each of the 8 of them wanting their own dipping sauce." However, I think the most important skill that you need to posses as a server is a working memory like no other.

In the perfect world, you would approach your table, with no distractions along the way, take their order, write it all down perfectly, and promptly walk back to the computer to put the order through. 95% of the time this not what happens.

Here's a little glimpse at the chaos that goes on every time I step out of my safe haven behind the bar to take a new table's order:

"Excuse me, miss, can we get another round" -table 3

"Can we get our bill?" -table 4

"I spilled my beer all over, can I get a rag" -table 5

*bell rings indicating an order is up*

"I know we already ordered, but I want to change mine" - table 6

Finally, after all of this, I make it to table 7 to take their order, which was my initial goal.This is a table of three, so I didn't feel the need to grab my note pad as I left the bar, telling myself "oh, I can remember three orders." But, can I remember those three orders on top of all the requests I got along the way from the other tables? We'll see.

Your short term, or woking, memory is your "capacity to hold a small amount of information in the mind for a short amount of time." This duration is typically 20-30 seconds and gives you the ability to retain about seven different items, give or take a few. According to this, I have exactly 30 seconds to get from table 7 and back behind the bar to frantically grab a pad and jot down all of these tasks. Yikes.

I've found that repeating the requests in my head helps tremendously to remember them. After taking a food order, I'll repeat it back to the patrons out loud. Not only does this work as a confirmation that I took the order correctly, but it begins my process of running it through my mind. As I approach table 4, I'll keep repeating what table 3 just asked of me, then add table 4's to the list and so on. By rehearsing information, you keep it fresh and are able to retain it longer. I've also found that chunking items gives me the ability to easily recall everything once I get back behind the bar and allows room for a few more items in my memory.

I chose this meme of Mr. Crabs as I feel like I can very much so relate to him during a busy day at work! His order must have been over the limit of what he could retain in is working memory at one time.