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Practice variability is defined as the variety of movement and context characteristics a person experiences while practicing a skill (Magill). Practice is all about improving gametime performance of a skill whether it be making the game winning free throw, sinking your putt, or making an accurate bow shot at the ten point buck you’ve been chasing all season. The question that comes to mind is “which practice scenarios or types are best for improving performance?” An age old question coaches, teachers, and even the avid bowhunter have been asking themselves. There are two extreme ends to answering this question, with a number of possible alternatives in between. On one end there is blocked trials in which the skill is repeated over and over with the same practice conditions. On the other end of the spectrum there is random practice with random trial order and numerous task variations. Recent research has shown random practice to be much more effective than blocked in producing a stronger performance of the desired skilled. The skill up for discussion is accurate shot placement in bowhunting. My father and I are both avid bowhunters, and are always looking for ways to improve our success rate. I believe that random practice will greatly help both of us to make a much cleaner, more accurate shot when out in the field. The practice must account for variability within both regulatory conditions and non regulatory conditions. The goal in this is to maintain proper bow mechanics while at the same time performing different shots under different conditions at a high level of efficiency. We will do this by practicing shooting at random ranges, angles, and depths relative to the target. We can also vary the practice by holding the draw for a random amount of time, varying the time of day we practice, and the weather conditions. When performing the skill from the treestand, it is impossible to determine the type of shot you will have to take ahead of time; shots of all different types must be practiced, and the ability to think on the fly and adjust must be learned. Through utilizing the concept of practice variability, I hope to help my father and myself become a more successful hunter.

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Transfer of learning is the gain or loss of one skill as a result of practice on some other skill. Recently, my mother slipped over an ice patch and dislocated her elbow. As a result, she has her right arm in a cast and is only able to use her left arm for various tasks. My mother’s dominant or preferred hand is her right, so with her injury, she will be forced to use her weak hand for the performance of various skills such as cooking, and writing. Knowing this, I became very interested in the concept of transfer, specifically bilateral transfer with her. Bilateral transfer is simply transfer of learning that occurs between two limbs. For instance, when a task is such as handwriting is learned with the dominant hand, the other hand naturally picks up on the skill without practice. After explaining this concept to my mom, I asked about how her handwriting was doing with her week hand now that she could not use her dominant hand. Performing the skill seemed very shaky, coarse, and difficult, but she was able to perform it nonetheless. Thinking back to when we first learned how to write in early childhood and how long it took to fully master the skill, it seems unreasonable that we could pick up the skill much faster without any practice with the other hand, yet we can. The skills involved in cooking, a little less common than writing, also experienced some degree of transfer. Although the movements were rather coarse and inefficient, my mother was still able to chop onions, crack eggs, flip pancakes, and peel potatoes without a huge degree of difficulty. These skills were never learned with her left hand, or even practiced with her left, but she was still able to perform them because of transfer of learning. Without these benefits, especially the benefits of bimanual transfer, my mother would have a much harder time functioning and performing everyday tasks while she waits for her arm to heal.

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Action selection, constraining of of the selected action, and timing of action initiation. These are all influenced by cues picked up from a visual search, and are crucial in performing a skill efficiently. Recently, one of my younger sisters has began driving. She took her drivers education class, earned her learners permit, and has practiced driving for a number of hours. Despite this, she is still a novice driver, and does not have the necessary experience to ensure a safe journey. She has mastered the basic skills such as accelerating and stopping smoothly, not over or undercutting her turns, and understanding and following the various traffic laws and expectations. What she lacks is an efficient visual search relating to the skill of driving. Mourant and Rockwell (1972) demonstrated this phenomena by comparing novice and experienced drivers. They tracked eye movement while driving and found that novices focuses closely on the immediate area in front of and around the car while experts focused more on the horizon and objects off in the distance. By broadening the range of focus, experts were able to pick up on potential threats and dangers faster, and alter their actions accordingly. My main goal, is not for my sister to discontinue driving, but for her to become more efficient faster to keep her out of accidents and potential harm. I believe the key here to be improving her visual search efficiency. There are several ways this can be improved. The most effective to my understanding is practice. She can focus on this while either driving, by sitting in the passenger seat. She should take time while she is not the driver to sit in the front of the car, and practice looking for and focusing on things as if she were driving. When I first began to drive, I remember my father constantly reminding me to focus on the horizon, and far ahead of the car, rather than focusing on the immediate area around the car. These sorts of verbal cues and reminders can go a long way towards improving performance, and in my sisters case, help her become an expert driver faster than most.

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According to Fitts and Posner’s model, there are three stages involved in learning; the cognitive stage, the associative stage, and the autonomous stage. The first stage, cognitive, largely involves determining the best strategies for performance in regards to cognitively oriented problems. This stage sees performance gains that are often large and dramatic, and performance feedback, usually from an instructor or coach, is frequently utilized. The second stage focuses on refining the skill, improving consistency, and associating different environmental cues with appropriate actions. This finally gives way to the final stage, autonomous, in which the skill has become automatic. When in this stage, one does not have to consciously think about the skill they are performing, it just becomes “automatic.” My youngest brother, currently four years old, is working on his baseball skills–particularly batting. Over the summer, I helped him practice. He was very clearly in the cognitive stage, and I would reason to guess he is still working through the cognitive stage. I gave him a number or verbal cues and coaching tips after each swing. I also helped him with foot placement, shoulder alignment, and bat height. I tried to make my instruction focus on proper mechanics by praising the fluid, focused, concentrated swings with good mechanics regardless of whether or not he hit the ball, and redirecting the swings with poor mechanics. Within each of our little practice sessions, I was able to notice large improvements in terms of him hitting the ball more consistently, more accurately, and more powerfully. I imagine he will stay in this stage for a while until he develops the strength, coordination, and reaction time to move onto the second stage. Once in the second stage, my help becomes less effective, and his development starts to rely much heavier on his own experience. I can still give him reminders, ques, and tips regarding what to focus on, and what to do differently, but this will only go so far. The third stage will continue much in the same way, with the difficulty being in the type of pitch he is receiving. As he develops, so will the environmental context and non regulatory conditions in baseball, so it is difficult to predict how this goes for him, granted he even choses to continue playing.

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Memory is a very unique and important concept, and plays a very valuable role in terms of daily function, long term health, and overall quality of life. We are using it constantly, and always looking for ways to improve it in terms of how much we can fit into our memory, and how fast we can retrieve it. These two concepts are synonymous to the terms encoding and retrieval with encoding relating to how much information we can store, how we store it, and where we store it. Retrieval is how well we can access information stored in our long term memory. The middle child in my family, was diagnosed with autism when he was around five years old. Throughout his life, my family members and I have found that he experiences a great amount of difficulty with encoding and retrieving certain pieces of information. At the same time however, he commits other bits of information, information most would regard as irrelevant or obsolete, to perfect memory. If you asked him, he can tell you every detail of his favorite movie Curious George, the color of our second cousins tractor, and the amount of garage doors at our local zoo. The question in all this revolves around why certain things are encoded and easily retrieved in his brain, and why others are not. It could be that most of his experiences are not properly encoded in his brain. It could also be that he has difficulty retrieving most information, except for that which he finds to be the most meaningful. Personally, I would guess that the majority of the problem resides within information retrieval. I have witnessed him rehearse bits of information or facts he was just told, but when asked about them an hour later, he draws a complete blank. This would mean that the information he receives is properly encoded, but his retrieval process is flawed. Overall, there should be a number of different psychological and physiological mechanisms that explain why he has such a difficult time remembering things whether it be from semantic, procedural, or episodic memory. These mechanisms are not perfectly laid out though, and it seems apparent that a great deal of further research is necessary on the subject.