https://padlet.com/alexismashl/q60ms2fzx1bg Ft. High school soccer glory days, intramural champs, slow-mo videos, making sounds with a cup, and being a not-so-nice girlfriend en-us 2017-11-22 03:14:14 UTC 2026-01-17 23:32:39 UTC hello@padlet.com alexismashl https://padlet.com/alexismashl/q60ms2fzx1bg/wish/209321472 When playing soccer when I was younger, I always remember my coaches yelling at me to look up when dribbling, rather than looking down at the ball. But at this age, I did not have the skill to successfully look up while dribbling because otherwise I would lose the ball. All of my visual attention was directed on the ball to make sure that I could keep it under my feet and not lose it while attempting to advance up field with it. The important visual cues I focused on were the ball, where my feet touched it, and how far I pushed it forwards with each dribble.

However, with years and years of practice, my success with dribbling got much better. I was able to learn how to coordinate my movements, timing, and touches with the ball with such success that I no longer needed to look down at the ball to know how and where to put it. This then allowed me to do what my coach was telling me to for years and look up. When looking up, I then was able to direct my visual attention to the players around me, the formations of them, their distances, where my teammates I wanted to pass to were, etc. 

This shows the difference in visual search between novices and experts when dribbling a soccer ball in a game. When I became an expert, I was able to perform more efficient visual searches than when I was a novice. This is because I was able to pick up on many more visual cues that helped me out with what I wanted to do with the ball and where the other team was while dribbling.

Below is a picture of me in a high school soccer game after 13 years of playing soccer. The task of dribbling a soccer ball took up much less room in my attention capacity, leaving more room for me to focus my attention on other things. In this moment, I am focusing this attention on locating the relevant environmental cues of where the defenders are around me so that I can make a decision where to pass the ball while dribbling. ]]> 2017-11-22 03:20:03 UTC https://padlet.com/alexismashl/q60ms2fzx1bg/wish/209321472 alexismashl https://padlet.com/alexismashl/q60ms2fzx1bg/wish/209321785 As always, my boyfriend thought that he was really cool trying to chug his drink and was going to send a snapchat video of it to his friends. Little did he know while doing this I was just waiting for the perfect moment to hit the drink of out his hand mid-chug. Ideally, I just wanted to reach to the side with my right arm and just hit it out of his hand, since that would have been the simplest way to do so. This would have been the simplest way because I would have used the lowest number of Degrees of Freedom in my control system for my arm. The elements in this would have been my muscles in the upper arm to lift my arm, my shoulder joint to allow my arm to move upwards, my elbow joint to extent my lower arm, and my wrist to flick the can out of his hand. (*Note: many more DOF were used, this is just a simplified explanation).  However, there was a problem to using this exact motor program. My boyfriend was holding the can with his left hand, making is left arm block the pathway for me to use this motor program successfully. 

Despite that having so many DOF is thought to sometimes be a problem because the nervous system has to control and pick which ones to use, this actually was a benefit in this situation. The motor equivalence of our motor control system allowed the capability for me to use a different set of DOF to be able to hit the drink out of his hand. This different set allowed me to take a different pathway by reaching under his arm and then upwards to complete this task. 

To do this different motor program, I had to use a different set of degrees of freedom than I originally wanted to. My upper arm muscles were used again, but not until after I used my elbow joint to rotate my lower arm under his arm holding the can. Then I used my upper arm muscles to lift my arm and the should joint allowed this arm to be rotated upwards. I then used the muscles in my hand to open it so that I could hit the bottom of the can and push it out of his hand and have it spill all over him. (*Note: many more DOF were used, this is just a simplified explanation). Although his arm acted as an obstacle to the original DOF I wanted to use, I was still able to achieve my goal of hitting the can and making it spill on him by using a different set of DOF. 

]]> 2017-11-22 03:23:18 UTC https://padlet.com/alexismashl/q60ms2fzx1bg/wish/209321785 alexismashl https://padlet.com/alexismashl/q60ms2fzx1bg/wish/209324391 While making our Senior Video for our Wisconsin History class in high school, my friend and I decided there would be no better way than to end our video with a jumping high-five. At the time, we thought the slow-mo just looked like a really cool effect to add.  Now with my gained interest over the years in body movement and mechanics, I could not watch this video without picking apart the components that made up our jumps.

In this video, we both decided we would jump at the same time. However, when one tries to think of how to jump, they can do it in many different ways. A little jump, a high jump to test a vertical, or like in this video a jump to do a high five. Although all of these types of jumps look slightly different, we have a generalized motor program that represents the class of movement patterns that allow us to label these movements all under the concept of a "jump".

For a jump to be considered a "jump" we must meet the three invariant features that are required for a jump's generalized motor program.
The video below showcases all 3 of these factors for a jump
1. The order of events for a jump are bending at the knees and hips, roll to ball of foot while pushing off the ground, floating upwards in the air, then as we fall we prepare for the landing by making a slight bend in our knees and hips, and lastly catching our balance once we land.
2. The relative time in each phase is the same for each jump. When Hannah and I are jumping below, my jump is slightly faster than hers. In each event, I spend a shorter amount of time in them than Hannah does with each event. However, each event has a similar period of time in each event than when comparing it to the other ones.
My jump times (I am in the jacket)
bend at knees-0.66 sec
roll and push- 0.2 sec
time up in air 2.0 sec
falling -1.4 sec
roll back from ball to heel when land- 0.52 sec
catch balance - 3.62 sec
 Hannah's jump (in "this girl loves cheese" shirt)
bend at knees-0.7 sec
roll and push-0.3 sec
time up in air 2.12 sec
falling -1.7 sec
roll back from ball to heel when land- 0.5 sec
catch balance-3.48 sec
*it is important to note the error in timing in that the slowing down of the video starts when we are in the air, so the timing for bending at the knees and roll and push should really be longer. However when comparing the jumps, the both are slowed at the same time in the jump 
Because my total jump was about 8.4 seconds and Hannah's was about 8.8 seconds when adding up all of the components. When looking at the relative time bending at the knees, I spend about 7.86% ((0.66/8.4) * 100) of my jump time doing this and Hannah spends about 7.95% ((0.7/ 8.8) * 100). Although our absolute jump times are different, the relative times are very similar. 
3.The last invariant feature is that the relative force is the same between different jumps. This can be explained by that in a jump, more force will be generated when pushing into the ground than when up in the air floating. The most relative force will be used for the push off and when landing. The least relative force generated will be when floating in the air and catching balance at the end. So, as long as in each jump the most force being generated is at the push off and landing, and the least is when up in the air and catching balance, it will be considered a jump. 

The superficial features, or the features that do not need to be the same for each jump are also evident in this video.
1. Overall duration: as seen above by the split timing of each event, Hannah's jump (8.8 seconds) last a little longer than mine (8.4 seconds). Overall, her jump has a longer duration. 
2. Overall force: because Hannah jumps higher than me, it is evident that she generated more force in the steps of bending at the knees and pushing off the ground than I did in these steps when I jumped
3. Muscle selection used: For mine and Hannah's jumps, we both used similar muscles because we did similar jumps. However, Hannah could have done her jump only on her left leg and I could have done mine only on my right leg. Despite that we each used different muscles due to using different legs, we would each still be preforming a jump. ]]> 2017-11-22 03:49:13 UTC https://padlet.com/alexismashl/q60ms2fzx1bg/wish/209324391 alexismashl https://padlet.com/alexismashl/q60ms2fzx1bg/wish/209324664 Living in Wisconsin, sometimes our sports choices are limited in the winter due to the massive amounts of snow covering what once was grass. Playing soccer as a kid, I got used to this and knew that spring, summer, and fall were outdoor season and the winter was indoor season played on turf fields. However, at this University, there are no indoor turf fields open for public use. My soccer intramural team and I still wanted to play competitively in a Rec Sports league in the winter, and this is when we learned about the sport of futsal. Futsal is essentially indoor soccer, with a lot of changes in the environment and to the set up of the players. Also, it is much more fast-paced than a real soccer game. Because all of the players on my team are very good at the sport of soccer and we have won intramural championships before (as seen in smaller picture below) , we thought we would see if our soccer skills from years of practice would positively transfer to the sport of futsal.

With never playing futsal before, we were surprised when we won our first season ever playing intramural futsal (pictured in the large image below). After learning about transfer in lecture, two theories can help explain why this positive transfer that occurred from soccer to futsal. 

Our previous practice and experience with the sport of soccer had beneficial effects on our performance in futsal. Thordyke would state that one of the reasons that this occurred is because of the Identical Elements Theory. This theory says that because both soccer and futsal share many similar elements, they are expected to transfer a lot more than if we tried to play softball, which shares very few similar elements. Some of these shared similar elements are the ways in which we dribble, pass, shoot, play defense one on one, and look to score. 

These similar elements, also known as component parts, relate to the observable movement patterns in both sports. Because they share component parts for certain skills need, skills used in soccer can will have a better positive transfer to futsal due to this reason. One of these elements that share component parts is taking a shot in soccer. When taking a shot in both soccer and futsal, we need to have our non-shooting foot planted next to the ball, have the shooting foot wind up backwards for the shot, swing the foot forwards towards the ball, and strike the back of the ball in different locations depending on where we want it to go. Despite that a futsal ball is smaller and heavier, we wear shoes in futsal instead of cleats, the ball is resting on a solid ground rather than grass, and the field and goals is smaller so that we cannot kick the ball as far, the movement pattern for futsal uses almost exactly the same one as the one used in soccer because of these component parts. 

Another reason that positive transfer occurred from soccer to futsal is due to the Transfer Appropriate Processing Theory. This is because similar strategies and rules are used for both which allow the cognitive processes for soccer to transfer to futsal. Some of these similar cognitive processes are:
*Similar defensive strategies for soccer are used in futsal
*Goalies use similar focus on the ball when someone is shooting at them
*Ideas for how to set up an offense based on the other team's strengths and    weaknesses
*Both sports use the rule of offsides. Because of this, players in the forward position must strategize on how to not break the rule while still playing close to the other team's defensive line
With all of our team members learning the cognitive process for being good at these four things (and many more not listed), these were able to be transfer to futsal where the same strategies are used. This is why in our first game, we were successfully able to do these four things without having to learn and practice what would work best. We did not have to learn and practice them because we already learned them with our years of playing soccer. It is important to mention that we were not experts at futsal right away due to some small differences like the field size and number of players. This is why there was not 100% positive transfer, but a large amount of skill was still able to be transferred to help us be successful from the start. 

]]> 2017-11-22 03:52:19 UTC https://padlet.com/alexismashl/q60ms2fzx1bg/wish/209324664 alexismashl https://padlet.com/alexismashl/q60ms2fzx1bg/wish/209324942 2017-11-22 03:55:16 UTC https://padlet.com/alexismashl/q60ms2fzx1bg/wish/209324942 alexismashl https://padlet.com/alexismashl/q60ms2fzx1bg/wish/209325136 When the movie Pitch Perfect first came out, EVERYONE was talking about the "Cup Song". Of course, my best friend Margaret who the biggest perfectionist I know learned and perfected it right away. Because of this, I begged her to explain it to me step-by-step while we were in study hall so I could then do it too. However, when she tried to explain it verbally, it really made no sense. Her explanation went something like this, "so you start with a double clap, then you hit the cup a few times, then... ". At this moment, she stopped verbally explaining it and did the motion in the air like she had a cup in her hand (even though she didn't). She then was able to explain the next step saying, "and then you grab it and move it to the side. After you...". She then stopped again because she could not remember and did the movement in the air again. 

I remember laughing at Margaret at this point for lying saying that she knew the whole thing. She got very mad then and swore that she did know it. For an unknown reason at the time, it was impossible for Margaret to explain the entire process without trying to do the movement to re-teach the order to herself again. So that night, me and my other two friends went to Margaret's house to truly see if she actually knew the whole Cup Song and so she could teach it to us. On the first try using a cup and doing the movement, Margaret did entire song with no errors or pauses. It is clear from watching her that memorized the entire process, but for some reason she just could not explain it verbally. Now, after learning about procedural knowledge vs declarative knowledge, it is obvious why Margaret was not able to explain it in words to me. 

When Margaret learned the Cup Song by watching videos of other people doing it online, she never learned the sequence verbally but instead by the movements. Because of this, her learning of this task could not be stored in her declarative memory. Instead, it was stored in her procedural memory because it included memory for motion. She did not learn the steps by words explaining it, but instead by physically doing the motion herself. Due to her storing how to do it in her procedural memory system, the only way she could then successfully recall this information was by doing it the way she learned it, with movement. 

*Below is a video of me and my 3 friends at Margaret's house after she taught us the Cup Song]]> 2017-11-22 03:57:17 UTC https://padlet.com/alexismashl/q60ms2fzx1bg/wish/209325136