Skill Acquisition

1
Skill Acquisition

• Cognitive Stage
• Associative Stage
• Autonomous Stage

2
Skill

• Procedural knowledge
• Acquired with cognitive mediation
• With practice, thinking time decreases according
  to the power function
• The limit is the cycle time of the instruments

3
Cognitive stage

• Problem solving Newell Simon, 1972
• States, goals, operators, and search/selection
• Operator acquisition Learning by conditioning,
  observation, or education
• Memory contains many operators
• Selection of operators is by difference reduction
  and operator subgoaling

4
Operator selection

• Difference reduction
• Tropisms
• Stochastic analysis
• Umweg problems
• Chess research (DeGroot, 1965f)

5
Operator selection, continued

• Operator subgoaling
• Subgoals are instrumental, not intrinsic
• Can instrumental subgoals become intrinsic?
• The miserly raccoon
• Allports functional autonomy
• Tool building is subgoaling Kohler
• Tower of Hanoi problem
• Role of the frontal cortex

6
The Associative Stage

• Proceduralization For the specific task,
  declarative knowledge is converted to procedural
  knowledge.
• Find the median of 1,3,4,6,7,8,9
• Practice lessens the need for cognitive mediation
  in a rehearsal buffer/ rehearsal system
• (9X 3) 4
• 5 X

7
The Associative Stage

• In proceduralization, recognition replaces recall
• The recognition strategies are called production
  rules
• Heuristics for knowing (recognizing) when to
  apply a solution strategy.
• Like vocabulary learning for a foreign language,
  production rules are not reversible.
• In other words, practice improves production
  rules only in the direction practiced.

8
Logan (1988) and production

• Alphabet arithmetic
• K 1 L
• K 2 ?
• K 5 ?
• Zbrodoff ( 1995) found that the solution time
  difference changed with practice.
• With practice or experience, problem solving is
  exchanged for retrieval.

9
Kinds of production rules

• Novice rules What do I need to know to solve a
  particular problem
• I need to prepare supper. What ingredients do I
  need? (Subgoaling)
• Expert rules What do I know that I can use to
  solve the problem?
• I need to prepare supper. Whats in the
  cupboard?
• Expert rules reorganize solution strategies.

10
Knowledge and skill

• To be good at a skill, you have to acquire a lot
  of knowledge.
• It takes time and effort to acquire a lot of
  knowledge.
• When a certain amount of knowledge is acquired on
  a topic, you begin to see patterns.
• Pattern recognition facilitates expert rules.
  Ericsson et al (1993) No talent.

11
The Autonomous Stage

• Non-cognitive, less interruptible
• The motor program
• Open-loop performance
• Closed-loop performance
• Non-cognitive control
• The monosynaptic stretch reflex 30 msec
• Cerebellar programs 80 msec
• Conscious reaction time 200msec

12
Motor schemas

• Cognitive representations of a motor program
• Generalizable to new tasks
• Different effectors, speed, force
• Improve with practice
• Schmidt (1988) and schemas
• Motor program is recall memory
• Desired outcome is recognition memory

13
Feedback effects

• Motor programs are adjustable with occasional
  feedback
• Cf. partial reinforcement
• Too much feedback can disrupt learning in any
  area
• However, timing and force learning may not be
  disrupted by constant feedback