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Forehand, Forehand, Forehand. Go to the end of the line.  Forehand, Forehand, Forehand. Go to the end of the line. Forehand, Forehand, Forehand. Go to the end of the line.  It's as monotonous to read as it is to cycle through in a tennis practice.  Every day at practice we would go through this drill, never varying or changing it.  This lack of variability in practice was not only boring, but as we learned in K361 it was also not beneficial to our readiness for a match situation when compared to a practice with variability.  As schema theory describes,  people develop rules about their own motor behavior.  The schema specific to this repetitive drill was essentially the transfer of weight and footwork leading up to the different shots.  Having practiced only one condition (same order every time)  we did not have the ability to develop as robust of a schema as we would have been able to compared to if we had received varied practice. Additionally, this monotonous, blocked practice resulted in low contextual interference. Which further meant we were ill prepared for match day.

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Information Processing: The difference between victory and defeat

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Information Processing: The difference between victory and defeat

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Being a center defender in soccer, I was usually the last line of defense between the opposing team and the goalie.  When it is a one-on-one situation of the opposing forward dribbling at me, I need to time identify where he or she will be moving, where the ball will be moving, how I will respond to that, and then act it out.  The stimulus identification stage starts with me on my toes, knees bent and facing slightly off center of the path of the opposing player running at me.  As he closes in within a yard of me, I need to identify any stimulus shown to me in the direction of his hips, eyes, or non-dominant foot placement. As soon a he plants or makes a move to get around me, I need to be able to identify that stimulus and select my response.  If i think that he is going to be able to get by me, my response will focus solely on disarming him of the ball or delaying him.  Whether a foot darting in to poke the ball out, or planting my body in front of him, the stimulus presented to me determine the response I select an execute.  This situation becomes much more difficult when it is just me versus two opposing players.  The more than doubles the amount of information to be processed by me.  This slows down my reaction time; as HIck’s law states every time the number of stimulus-response alternatives doubles the choice reaction time increases by a constant amount.  As the game progresses, it’s extremely important that I do not let a highly learned S-R relationship have a detrimental effect on my response selection.  It is easy to be lulled into a “rhythm” of attacks by the opposing player, only to have my response time decrease enough that a new stimulus presented will take too long for me to respond to, resulting in an opposing team’s goal.

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“Square your hips!” “Keep your head up!” “Keep your knee over the ball and don’t lean back!” These are all key components of a soccer shot, and phrases that I have heard countless times on the practice field as a adolescent.  With many different coaches and coaching styles, I have received augmented feedback such as this too often, not enough, and just the right amount.  As learned in K361, augmented feedback can be essential, hinder, enhance, or not be needed for skill acquisition.  As a child I loved to get feedback of any sort, and would routinely ask my coach for comments from my coach about my form and overall performance.  The coaches would usually tell me both descriptive (Caleb you leaned back a little bit too much on that shot) and prescriptive (plant into your left foot and square your hips before you make contact with the ball” comments to increase my knowledge of performance.  I received much more of this feedback as I was learning how take a free-kick in soccer.  It was initially very useful when I started soccer in grade school, however as my skills improved through middle and high school I found the feedback to be less and less helpful.  As I developed the different movement patterns for different shots, augmented feedback from coaches only served to distract me from the task-intrinsic feedback I could access and analyze by myself just after the shot.  This is a childhood experience and a lecture learned in K361 that I will carry with me to my next stages of life.  I will be coaching a team of 7-8 year olds in recreational soccer through Madison School and Community Recreation and will be restraining the feedback I give by using some of the techniques that reduce augmented feedback frequency we have discussed in class.

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I wish that we had learned about mental practice earlier in the semester! Once again I found myself sharing what I had learned in K361 to our balance class.  We take frequent breaks from dancing to catch a breather, socialize with other volunteers and participants, and get a drink a water if needed. As we learned in K361, mental practice both aids in acquisition of new motor skills, and aids in performing a well-learned skill.  This meant the mental practice could be beneficial to the participants whether they were novices or well-learned in Foxtrot. Although the socialization is a key part to the class, I proposed that for one of the breaks we instead mentally practice doing the Foxtrot. I shared with them what I had learned in K361 about mental practice, and using either internal or external imagery.  They were amazed to learn that while mental practice is not quite as good as actually practicing, it is still very helpful (especially when done in addition to physical practice)  Although they took some convincing,  they agreed to give it a go.  While they said they enjoyed the mental practice, nobody wanted to do it the next week.  I think that it was a testament to how much they valued their social time with one another and not a reflection of the validity of practice!

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Being a volunteer and instructor with Ballroom Basics for Balance, I am always looking for ways to make learning a new dance easier to learn and practice at home.  This class educates and helps Madison area seniors practice their balance through ballroom, but in a more macroscopic view it really embodies many of the concepts that we have learned in Kinesiology 361.  Learning the Tango poses a bit of a challenge for many the participants as it was not a dance they learned or performed leisurely in their youth.  Its great for challenging balance, and really imparts a bold, sophisticated feeling when performed.  The challenge is: how to teach this step so that the participants don't feel overwhelmed?  As learned in K361, tasks high in complexity are excellent for practicing the skills in parts, while tasks high in organization should use a whole practice strategy. Dance falls into the high complexity category, which makes it an excellent task to break into parts.  As in most dances, there are multiple steps that you put together to make the dance.  Using segmentation, we break down the dance into the different steps so that the participants do not feel overwhelmed and can perform at least parts of the dance. We then piece together the forward, backward, balance, and turning steps so that the participants can practice them together. This segmentation results in a less frustrated, more engaged, and balanced class.