Initially the task of setting up the projectors took a lot of time and cognitive effort, and I was mainly dealing with my Declarative Memory System.  However, after two years of threading up the projectors I had mastered the task.  I was able to easily thread up both projectors while jamming out to music and talking with my co-workers.  At this point the task was mainly encoded into my Procedural Memory System and the task now required little to no cognitive effort.  I found that because of this change in memory systems, I had a very hard time explaining the process to new employees without physically performing the task.

I chose this GIF because it gives you an idea of the artifact that I was dealing with.

 

I eventually realized that I had to slow down my typing and only focus on the main aspects of each slide. Using the speed and accuracy trade-off of Fitts’ Law, I was able to greatly improve the accuracy of my typing by sacrificing my typing speed.  My notes were finally coherent and studying became less confusing.

I chose this GIF because it looks like actual footage of me trying to type in that class.

 

In order to practice this skill when I was very young, my team utilized part practice with the hope that it would transfer to the whole skill.  The swing itself is highly organized and it would be difficult to isolate certain portions of it, so we used the simplification strategy to reduce the difficulty of specific parts of the skill.  Instead of having the baseball pitched to us, the ball was simply placed on a tee.  This allowed us to reduce the attention demands of the task without changing the action goal.

I chose this GIF because that is how my swing would have looked had I not broken down the skill with Part-task Practice.

 

A few years ago during the winter, I decided to attempt downhill skiing with a group of my friends. To my surprise, my experience with water skiing greatly helped me acquire this new skill.  When compared to one of my friends who had not water skied, I was able to keep my balance much better and weaving back and forth came very easily. There was a positive transfer of learning between the tasks, meaning that there was a beneficial effect of previous experience on learning or performance.  This transfer could be explained through Thorndike’s Identical Elements Theory, due to the similarity of skill and context components.


I chose this GIF because that is how I felt once I realized that I could actually downhill ski already. Most likely the ostrich is also a proficient water skier.

 

After taking this class, I now know of the benefits of mental practice, and how imagery can be used to successfully improve performance.  Specifically, the practice has been shown to significantly improve muscle strength, even without changing muscle diameter.


I chose this GIF because even though mental practice did not change the size of my muscles, it was able to increase my strength.