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Ballroom Dance - Whole and Part Practice

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Ballroom Dance - Whole and Part Practice

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Last semester I took a dance class for the very first time. It was the “Ballroom Dance” class through the University of Wisconsin Madison. It was so much fun and a great learning experience. Although I was a novice at dancing when I began this class, I felt like I made drastic improvements in my skill, timing, and dancing as a whole. When teaching and learning a new motor skill, such as dancing, the type of practice techniques that are used is a very important factor in how much learning occurs. I believe that the specific type of practice the teacher prescribed to teach us the skill of dancing heavily influenced my dramatic gain in dancing ability.

There are many different types of practice techniques. Most of them fall under two categories, whole practice and part practice. Whole practice refers to practicing the skill in its entirety while part practice refers to practicing the individual components of the skill independently. Seems easy enough right? However, there are two factors that must be assessed when choosing between whole and part practicing techniques. One must assess the degree of complexity and organization of a given task and how these

two characteristics relate to each. Complexity refers to the number of parts or components in a skill, as well as the information processing demands of the task. Organization refers to the relationship among the component parts of the skill, spatially and temporally, which are assessed interdependently. Dance is a skill that is high in both complexity and organization. When both these factors are high in a given motor task, one must determine which parts need to be practiced as whole, and which can be practiced in parts. I think my teacher did an excellent job on deciding what should be taught with whole practice, important for keeping the timing of the dance movements accurate, and what should be taught using part practice, which were extremely complex dance moves that needed to be broken down into steps to learn.

I learned dances that ranged from the tango and swing, to dances like the waltz and foxtrot. It was a great experience and the teacher’s knowledge of when to use whole and part practice was extremely effective for teaching a beginner’s dance class.

The picture bellow represents the teacher implementing the whole practice technique while teaching a skill to novice dancers. She is having them practice the whole sequence of steps and strongly reinforces aspects like flow and timing. Just so you know, the teacher did this in a much more appropriate way that was not as hands-on as this GIF would suggest.

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Ever since I was 3 years old, I have loved to skate and play hockey. This was my favorite sport and by the time I got to 7th grade, it was my primary sport. Nothing, in my mind, was more important than hockey, especially not school, friends, or sleep. Although I only play intramural hockey here at UW Madison now for fun, the many skills I have accumulated over the years of playing competitively have stuck with me to this day. The motor skill that I use often and would like to relate to class is the concept of “the fake.”

The fake, or deke, can be described as an ice hockey technique whereby a player draws an opposing player out of position or is used to skate by an opponent while maintaining possession and control of the puck. The term deke is a Canadianism formed by abbreviating the word decoy. However, in our class we learned that a fake can be better understood by looking at the Psychological Refractory Period (PRP) through Welford’s Single-Channel Hypothesis. His hypothesis is similar to the bottleneck theory and states that if a stimulus enters the single channel, then the processing of a second signal cannot occur until the channel is cleared. The concept of a deke (or move or fake) in the game of hockey is a great example of a real-life behavior that reflects the concept of the psychological refractory period (PRP). When I am trying to score, I make a fake to my right. This is considered the first stimulus that the goalie reacts to, by moving his body to his left in the way of blocking the puck to prevent a goal. I then quickly move the puck back to my left, after this fake, and shoot the puck for a goal. This is considered the second stimulus that the goalie must react to in order to prevent the goal, by sliding back to his right. Because the goalie is presented with a second stimulus in a short amount of time, while still processing the first stimulus, his reaction time to the second stimulus will increase, according to Welford's model, giving me a better chance to best the goalie and score a goal.

That is why making a deke in hockey is a common strategy to get by defenders and the goalie in the game of ice hockey. I still use this skill often and it works most of the time, even though my skills are getting a bit rusty!

The picture above shows one of my favorite players, Zach Parise, scoring a goal. In the context of the example given above, this is the second stimulus that the goalie is being presented and is not able to move to his right to stop the puke. The fake worked in this case and he scored. This is a great in-game example of a successful deke, with elements of the psychological refractory period able to be seen.

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Backing a Trailer - Stimulus-Response Incompatibility:  

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Backing a Trailer - Stimulus-Response Incompatibility:  

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After many months of begging my family to purchase a motorboat, they finally gave in and bought a 2002 used Glastron motorboat! This was an exciting and new experience for all of us because we had never owned a boat before. For those who aren’t familiar with the required skills and tasks required when owning a boat, I can enlighten you on a couple. For those who keep their boat in their garage, like we do, you will need a trailer that can haul your boat to the lake as well as the acquired skill of backing up the trailer, that carries your boat, to insert it into the water. While learning to drive forward towing a boat trailer has some challenges, the skill of driving in reverse, backing the boat trailer into the water, is much harder than it sounds.

When performing the motor task of backing the trailer into the lake, one must consider the type of stimulus-response compatibility between movements of the steering wheel and the direction the boat trailer will go. Stimulus-response compatibity is the extent to which the stimulus and responses are associated in a natural way. This can be illustrated by examining an adult’s well-practiced skill of backing a car up normally. The driver knows which way to turn the wheel to make the car back in the desired direction. In contrast, stimulus-response incompatibility refers to the extent to which the stimulus and response are associated in an unnatural way. This generally leads to longer movement times and more errors. Stimulus-response incompatibility describes what it’s like for that same well-practiced adult to be introduced to this new task of backing a trailer and how they will respond to the incompatible stimuli. I would consider myself an experienced driver and am very good at backing into the garage to park. Even so, the first time I tried to back the trailer into the water it went the wrong way. I turned the wheel the correct direction to make the car go in the right direction, but as I immediately found out, the trailer goes the opposite way the car goes when backing. Because of stimulus-response incompatibility, this was a hard adjustment to make. Because I was so well versed of backing without a trailer, this led to many errors when backing the trailer into the water.

I’ve gotten better with lots of practice, but it is still difficult to overcome these incompatible stimuli because I still back up normally more than I do with the trailer. When driving in reverse with the boat trailer, I need to pause and put extra attention and focus into making sure I am turning the wheel the right way. I still, to this day, commit errors often.

The picture below well illustrated the concept of the car turning the expected way, but the trailer turning the other way. The picture then gives very useful verbal instructions to overcome the incompatibility in this situation. I am going to implement this technique when I back the trailer in a couple days!

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One of my favorite stress relievers from the chaos of going to school at the University of Wisconsin Madison is to go out to the variety of bars downtown with my friends on the weekends. It is always great to get away from the chores, classes, homework, tests, and the many responsibilities that accompany living downtown. One of my favorite activities to do at the bars is to play darts. Almost every bar downtown has multiple dart machines that you pay 2 dollars to play your friends or anyone else in a friendly, but competitive game of darts.

The concept that I am going to illustrate through myself playing darts at the bars, is the concept of “choking” that we learned about this semester. The correct definition of chocking, by Beilock and colleagues, states that chocking results when experts attempt to harness declarative memories in the execution of a skill that has long since been encoded in procedural form. Declarative memory refers to a type of long-term memory that involves conscious recollection of particular facts and events or a conscious memory of a fact or event. Procedural memory is a type of implicit long-term memory which aids the performance of types of tasks without conscious awareness of these previous experiences. Procedural memory guides the processes we perform and most frequently resides below the level of conscious awareness. I consider myself an expert at darts because I play often, usually win, my motor movements are autonomous, and it doesn’t require much, if any, attention to complete this motor task accurately. Considering all this, I would describe the type of memory I use while playing darts to be Procedural memory. However, during a close came with a friend that I was ahead in, where the pressure at the end of the game was running high and everyone was watching, I ended up overthinking my motor movements and chocked. I lost the game and felt the embarrassment of blowing the lead, all due to what I would have described back then as overthinking my movements or becoming nervous under pressure.

Actually, I was accessing the declarative memories I had about facts of throwing the dart, arm movement, and everyone watching, which interfered with my autonomous execution of the skill. The more I chocked, the more declarative memory I was accessing and using to try to improve on the task. I should have just relaxed and let my procedural memory take over. I would have probably won the game in front of all my friends!

The picture above illustrates the feeling of chocking after making a bad shot. That happens when an individual is relying on declarative memory instead of the natural, procedural memory for a well-learned skill. Just look at the disappointment of the thrower at his last throw in the picture! And yes, I do dress up that much and look that good when I go to bars in downtown Madison!

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Learning to Wakeboard - An Example of an "Ogive" or "S-Shaped" Learning Curve Trend:

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Learning to Wakeboard - An Example of an "Ogive" or "S-Shaped" Learning Curve Trend:

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At the beginning of this semester I had the amazing opportunity to learn how to wakeboard! For those of you that don’t know what wakeboarding is, it is the water sport of riding on a short, wide board resembling a surfboard and performing acrobatic maneuvers while being towed behind a motorboat. If one wants to perform this feat of wakeboarding you are going to need a few things, such as a life jacket, a wakeboard, a motorboat, people to drive the boat and watch in case of injury, and physical fitness that give an individual the chance to learn this fun, but incredibly difficult motor skill.

I will demonstrate my improvement and learning of this motor task by telling you about my estimated learning curve, with the number of trials of wakeboarding on the x-axis, and time spend successfully wakeboarding before I fell in seconds on the y-axis. Out of all the different types of learning curves we learned about this semester, the “Ogive” or “S-Shaped” learning curve trend best describes and visually represents my learning of this new motor skill. During my first trial, I couldn’t hold onto the rope when the boat started moving, which counted as 0 seconds spent wakeboarding. My second trial I could hold on a little bit longer, for about 1 second, then let go again, still not able to stand up on the wakeboard. The trend continued with this type of small improvement till my 5th try. Trials 1-5 represent the slowly increasing first part of the Ogive curve. The middle of the Ogive curve is represented by the rapid improvement that occurred next. Once you are up out of the water on the wakeboard, it is much easier to wakeboard for a longer time before you fall, which occurred on my 5th trial. My times started improving by 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 30 seconds, then minuets during this phase. The third and final phase of the Ogive curve shows the expected “Negatively Accelerated Function” which states that the rate of improvement changes toward zero as practice continues. This plateau occurred for me most likely because I was reaching my full capacity for the skill of wakeboarding, known as approaching the ceiling, or the ceiling affect, which represents the performance max level point being drawn near to or reached.

This was an awesome new skill and one of my favorite things to do. On a good trial I can now stay up for around 4-5 minutes before getting too tired that I just let go of the rope to sink into the water and rest. I’d personally say I’ve reached my max potential for this skill, but we will see what happens this summer when I get back out onto the lake again!

The picture above shows the start of the motor skill of wakeboarding. It represents the beginning of my Ogive learning cure, the part where i wasn't able to stand up on the water yet. But i eventually got up and was able to glide on top of the water!