https://padlet.com/chriscobus2/kines361 Explaining the concepts of motor behavior and learning en-us 2016-05-02 02:27:50 UTC 2025-10-25 22:21:09 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padletuploads.blob.core.windows.net/aws/111998846/e525d66a0f124823ff85d217758633c5a80cf1ba/e7b1aeb151f7c8a084de732a5b5bf6d7.png chriscobus2 https://padlet.com/chriscobus2/kines361/wish/108863088 Have you ever noticed how good you are at typing, writing, or simply even reaching for an everyday object? Well next time you perform one of these simple tasks try to do it super fast. I bet you screw up much more than usual. This is all due to the speed-accuracy trade off. This is what Paul M Fitts discovered when attempting to tap in certain targets with a pencil. This law of our physical abilities hinders us in being able to be extremely fast and extremely accurate at the same time. You can have one, but not the other, so don't try to bite off more than you can chew. The index of difficulty is the major factor in not allowing us to be super humanly fast and deadly accurate all at once. If the object has a small width and it is far away, it causes us to slow down our cognitive speeds and really focus on hitting our target, rather than doing it with cheetah-like speeds. This video is a perfect example of how the trade off occurs. When you see Sidney Crosby take his first shot at the pile of pucks it's much stronger and less accurate because of the large target. But once the puck starts to roll down the boards he has to change from a slap shot to a wrist shot, a much slower and more controlled motion. Even one of the best hockey players in the world cannot outdo the crushing grasp of Fitts' Law.]]> 2016-05-02 21:27:55 UTC https://padlet.com/chriscobus2/kines361/wish/108863088 chriscobus2 https://padlet.com/chriscobus2/kines361/wish/108869552 Playoffs? Don't talk about playoffs. It's pretty obvious that everyone believes practice makes perfect. But what if I told you that not all practice can make perfect? Even exceeding the 10,000 hours that is believed to make you perfect may not result in perfection because of the conditions they practiced in. If they do not transfer well to test or game situations the practice will have been for trivial gains in their skills. A coach may have drilled his players during practice in a blocked setting. meaning that he made them perform one skill for a long time over and over again, and then went on to the next skill for a high number of repeated times as well. However, during a real game do we perform the exact same skill over and over again until we decide we are done with it? No. We perform different skills sporadically based on the necessities of the situation. These random skills used in the game are the exact same way that we should practice those tasks outside of the actual situation. Attempting to simulate the games atmosphere by creating a random lineup of practice skills allows an athlete to retain those skills for longer, and have them transfer to other environments. Perhaps my terrible soccer coach was the reason that my club team was nationally ranked in high school. We simply scrimmaged at every practice, allowing us to see many different types of game situations. Maybe this coach needs to reevaluate his coaching skills in order to get his team to the hallowed grounds of the playoffs. (You have to click the video to play with sound)]]> 2016-05-02 22:47:04 UTC https://padlet.com/chriscobus2/kines361/wish/108869552 chriscobus2 https://padlet.com/chriscobus2/kines361/wish/108873164 Coordination is sometimes in short supply for times when it is needed most. One specific type of coordination that suffers drastically involves movement of multiple limbs at the same time. However, these limbs are not doing the same motion. This leaves your cognitive ability in a pickle because we naturally want to be doing the same thing with each limb simultaneously. Try lifting your leg and tracing a "6" in the air will also tracing a sideways figure eight with your hand. Not so easy is it? This is because of the spatial biasing between coordination of limbs. This bias causes one of your limbs to change in its motion to do the same as the other, whether it is your arm or your leg following the other ones lead. The leader is established unconsciously and through a process of unintended phase transitioning. You can now stop looking like a fool trying to move your arm and leg at the same time, and go on with your day knowing that such a simple task has bested you. ]]> 2016-05-02 23:29:13 UTC https://padlet.com/chriscobus2/kines361/wish/108873164 chriscobus2 https://padlet.com/chriscobus2/kines361/wish/109102536 It might be obvious that little old me playing LeBron James in basketball would be a complete blow out. But the real question is why? Or how did it turn out that LeBron is so good at basketball and I am not? Even if LeBron never practiced at all throughout his entire life he would still beat me in a game of one on one basketball. This may be partially influenced by my stature. Five feet and eight inches tall may not be the greatest height for basketball, unless you're named Muggsy Bogues at five feet three inches. But what are these factors that determine how good we are at something with out even trying? These are our natural abilities. They are not influenced by practicing. A coach cannot train LeBron to be a foot taller then me, or even his muscular definition. Although everyone can work out in the gym, not everyone is genetically built to be a super muscly person. LeBron, however, was built for both muscle and height. These natural abilities give him a bit of an advantage against a competitor like myself. It's almost unheard of to see how dominant LeBron can be in one on one situations at the professional level of a major sport. What is even more absurd is that he was doing all of this straight out of high school. He came into the league in one of the last couple years that allowed players to skip college if they chose to, and he still dominated with way less experience than any other NBA player. If that's not natural ability then I don't know what is. Just look at this incredible dunk and tell me that he wasn't born to be doing what he is doing. I'll just have to hope I win the lottery and that I am better at other abilities like arm-hand steadiness or finger dexterity, that aren't quite as profitable.]]> 2016-05-03 22:44:20 UTC https://padlet.com/chriscobus2/kines361/wish/109102536 chriscobus2 https://padlet.com/chriscobus2/kines361/wish/109126015 Lack of attention on any one phase of bike riding could cause you to end up like me, missing my two front teeth at ten years of age. Going over jumps on my bicycle was a bit of a hobby of mine as a kid, but my procedural memory was not quite formed on how to land these jumps. So one day i went flying over the front of my handlebars and landed straight on my mouth, knocking out my own teeth. Learn from my misery, and gain procedural memory before trying anything too extreme. Do you ever think about how difficult it is to start riding a bike when you're a little kid? Neither do I. The old phrase of "it's like riding a bike" is simply the layman's term tossed around for every task in procedural memory. You don't have to think about each distinct step every time you ride a bike after you learned the skill to a certain extent. From then on we simply perform the task, and can do so without clogging up our cognitive capacity. This is the only reason we can avoid traffic while riding. If we couldn't do it autonomously we would be extremely dangerous because we would focus on either steering, balancing, or pedaling, but never them all at the same time because we would have to knowingly switch our attention. Now, think about how you would explain riding a bike to your little nephew you have on the phone that needs help. You can't just say "get on and go" but you don't know how to explain exactly what you do in order to ride your own bike to class everyday. This is the procedural memory that we learn at a certain point that is never forgotten, because we do not have to actively think about it. This incredible feat of the human body allows us to perform many tasks that would not otherwise be available. ]]> 2016-05-04 02:43:57 UTC https://padlet.com/chriscobus2/kines361/wish/109126015