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For 5 years, you could find me every summer instructing tennis for my hometown's park and recreation department. I loved my job, because I love tennis, teaching, and kids, so it really was the perfect combination for me. However, it wasn't always smooth sailing for me, and that's all thanks to Procedural vs. Declarative Memory.
Declarative memory is your memory of facts and knowledge; essentially, concepts that can be "declared". It can also be episodic - basically "flashbacks" of past events. It's the type of memory I would use as a tennis instructor to try to explain to my students the proper form for a forehand. For example: "First stand in the ready position with your dominant hand on number 2 on your grip. Next, when you see the ball bounce, you'll need to..." This was all well and good, but the problem was, as an avid tennis player, I had stopped relying on declarative memory long ago, and so there was a disconnect between my students as sometimes my explanations did not connect with them or left out some steps that were natural to me.
Instead of relying on declarative memory, I relied on procedural, which focuses more on your motor skills and what you're actually doing instead of thinking more about the definition of "what" you're doing. Procedural memory is nonconscious and automatic - your body knows what you are supposed to be doing and doesn't need to focus about thinking about it. Playing tennis had become automatic for me long ago - the problem was, it hadn't for my students, and so I needed to come up with strategies to help us overcome this disconnect.
One such strategy was "shadowing" - I would stand in front of them and perform a stroke while explaining my movements, and at the exact same time, they would try to copy me exactly. We would repeat this process again and again while my fellow instructors would walk around and observe the kids and make corrections where they needed to. Another strategy I used, out of many, was actually positioning them myself. We would move through strokes slowly, which would allow me to be able to gently guide their racquet with my hand to show them where it needed to go. Sometimes, I'd need to tap their foot to show them where it needed to go, or guide their elbows myself to show them the correct placement. In this way, I was showing their body what it needed to do so they could get the feel for it instead of just trying to put it into words, so I was able to show them my procedural memory, in a sense.

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Knitting my Grandmother Would be Proud Of

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Knitting my Grandmother Would be Proud Of

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This past winter break I found myself with a delightful amount of free time on my hands. Naturally, I decided to take up a new hobby - knitting. I love to be able to do something with my hands while watching Netflix, so I figured knitting was the perfect solution.
I had several problems with this idea right off the bat. First of all, when I started, I was terrible at knitting. I was dropping stitches left and right and making a general mess of things. Knitting required my whole focus, so I had no hope or prayer of being able to watch Netflix at the same time. Being the strange and spontaneous person that I am, I was in the process of binge-watching a Turkish soap opera that I had stumbled upon, and so not only did I need to be able to focus on my knitting, I also needed to be able to read the subtitles as they weren't speaking English.
Thankfully for me, there are several stages to motor learning, and so I didn't need to stay in the bumbling knitting stage I began in. Fitts and Posner have proposed a 3 stage model to motor learning - the cognitive stage, the associative stage, and the autonomous stage. After lots of practice and many ugly scarves, I finally progressed to the final stage - the autonomous stage. This stage is where the skill becomes mostly automatic, and doesn't require much thought because it requires less attention. I was able to knit without much thought and less focus, and so I was able to read those English subtitles while knitting a masterpiece with ease (mind you, I was using the most basic of knit stitches). In this stage, it's also possible to detect and correct errors, which I was successfully able to do. Whenever I was about to drop a stitch, I caught it and moved on easily. I was also able to process information from other areas of the task, such as adding a new color when I wanted to and tightening stitches were I wanted too, instead of just hanging on for dear life just to create something that didn't look like a colorful potato.
This winter break I was proud of several accomplishments - knitting and finishing a 75-episode Turkish drama, to name a few.

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Tennis is a sport I have loved all my life, and so I was thrilled when I entered high-school and was able to play for a team. Growing up spending countless hours practicing and playing, I developed considerable skills as a singles player. While I could decide how dedicated I was and how much I practiced, there was one area of the sport I had less control over - attention.
Attention is the cognitive side of motor behavior and control - the awareness and thoughts (or lack thereof) that we put into a task, and the cognitive effort it takes. There are several attention theories that try to explain how much attention we can give to a task and what determines the quality of attention that we do have. One such theory is the arousal theory, and I experienced this acutely whenever I played in the state level for tennis.
The arousal theory incorporates many components - physiological, emotional, and mental - to explain how much attention we can give a task and how it affects our performance based on our level of our arousal. This theory displays an upside-down "U", with emotional arousal (low, moderate, high) on the x-axis and the performance level on the y-axis. Maximum performance is on the peak of this upside-down "U" and the corresponding level of arousal to this performance is ideal for athletes trying to compete at their best. Each individual has their own arousal curve, and may find their maximum performance at low, moderate, or high levels of arousal.
Competing in state tennis, I learned that my optimum level of arousal is definitely moderate. Whenever I played at state, I was overaroused. I was nervous, stressed, and anxious as the stakes were very high for me. My heart beat faster, I breathed faster, my palms were sweaty, and my whole body was tense. I was still able to compete this way, but it was hard. Since my muscles were tight, it took much longer for me to warm up and for my strokes to become more fluid. After several games, I would finally calm down and be at the more moderate level of arousal, but not before I may have lost some games that I shouldn't have.
On the other hand, my performance also suffered if I had a low level of arousal, such as when I played an opponent who was significantly not as skilled as I was. I would get distracted and bored, and so I would make silly mistakes that I shouldn't have or I would over hit a shot so that it slammed into the back fence.
My best performance was seen at a moderate level of arousal, what I would consider my sweet spot. I would typically experience this during a conference match against a decent opponent. I was comfortable because the stakes weren't too high, but I still wanted to win. My opponent was decent enough that I would need to allocate most of my attention to the match, but not too much that I became anxious or stressed. These matches I performed well and also had a lot of fun playing the sport that I loved.

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Shampooing my Way into Memory Consolidation

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Shampooing my Way into Memory Consolidation

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When I was in high-school, I performed in show choir all 4 years. Show choir is basically up-beat dancing in heels while singing. Each competition set we performed, we needed to remember our vocal parts for 5 different songs as well as the choreography, consisting of hundreds of moves. With so much to remember, we needed to rely on our memory consolidation, which is basically how a new memory is stored into our permanent, long term memory. This can be difficult to do (on top of dancing in heels), so there are strategies to improve this consolidation process. One such strategy is to improve the movement's meaningfulness through imagery - assigning an image or picture in your head to a motor movement. For every choreography move we learned, we assigned an image to it to remember it. For instance, one move we called "shampoo" because you literally wrapped your arm around your head like you were shampooing in the shower. Another move we decided to call "running man" because we moved our arms and legs like we were running in slow motion. "Rag doll" was the name of a move where we held our bodies loose like a rag doll and allowed our arms to hang loose. With the imagery, I was able to remember moves much better than trying to recall what exactly each limb was supposed to be doing. Additionally, our choreographers would call out the images for the moves in order for us to do them. I know without this strategy to improve my consolidation, I would have been one lost dancer.

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For as long as I can remember, my family has spent a week by Little St. Germain Lake every summer. Growing up, I was able to watch my mom slalom ski behind our family's boat year after year. As I grew older, I decided I wanted to try too. First, I mastered it on 2 skis, and I was 13  when I felt like I was finally ready to try slalom skiing.
Initially, I wanted to try to get up up on 1 ski instead of dropping one. I'll be honest - I was terrible. As I tried to get up, my face was dragged in the water again and again as I failed. This went on for several years, but I stubbornly kept trying. After some years, I was finally able to get up on 1 ski and stay up - but only for a short time. I wasn't comfortable on the ski and I felt out of control, and I wasn't having fun. I thought I'd never be as good as my mother.
Finally, last summer, years after my first initial attempt at slaloming, something clicked. I tried using my muscles in different ways, and changing the way I shifted my weight. Suddenly, I considered myself a slalom skier. I could control my ski perfectly well in the water, cutting through the wake and gliding over the water. Before, I had only stayed up for a minute, but now, I could easily do 5 before I got too tired.
So what exactly happened to make my performance drastically change? All those years, motor learning was occuring. Motor learning is a permanent change in the capability of a person to perform a skill, such as skiing. I practiced again and again, but I seemingly did not improve. Performance curves are often used to show the improvement and consistency of an individual as they learn a skill, with performance on the y-axis and time on the x-axis.The performance curve trend my slalom skiing took on was s-shaped, otherwise known as the Ogive curve. This curve is common for complex tasks. Initially, performance does not improve for a period, and suddenly, performance improves at a steep rate. This steep portion of the curve is what happened to me this past summer; suddenly, I got the hang of slalom skiing, and I could control the ski. Since I now had control, my performance improved even more, because I could try new strategies, and experiment new skills, such as cutting in and out of the wake. I took those skills with me even when the scenery and weather changed - whether  the lake was calm or a bit choppy, or whether or not I was in Little St. Germain Lake or huge and busy Lake Winnebago.
The last part of the curve is a plateau at the end. Once performance has increased at a rapid rate, it levels off again with slow or no improvements. This is currently the stage I'm in now - I practiced all summer, and although I was content and happy with my performance, I did not improve by that much after that initial week. This does not mean that learning is not occuring necessarily,but it could be due to performance variables. For example, the boat my family has is a deck boat, and it's not really meant for slalom skiing and for going fast. This would be considered a ceiling effect - my boat only allows for so much improvement before it hinders improvement. I learned the  essential piece of slaloming that I was missing out on that week, and afterwards, dedication and lots of practice is required.
The bottom line is, I'm glad I kept persevering and never gave up. It's so worth it - no matter what performance curve trend your learning takes on.

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies