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Skills are defined by psychologist E. R. Guthrie as the ability to bring about some end result with maximum certainty and minimum outlay of energy, or of time and energy. This project has made me appreciate the difficulties a learner faces in trying to acquire a new skill. Many factors affect a person's success in learning a new skill such as arousal level and visual tracking. Even after over twenty practices I never reached the final stage of learning.
I have never attempted to juggle before and this was shown in my first practice session. It was difficult for me to toss the ball from hand to hand with proper control. A reason for this was my nervousness because there were people around me watching, after I was able to be alone, I improved. It took me five practices to master the first step (throwing the ball from one hand to the other to form an X) with good control.
After seeing me struggle for so long, a friend who can juggle helped me add in the second ball. In these steps, I learned the throw-throw, catch-catch, and throw-catch, throw-throw patterns. Having a person there to show me exactly what I was doing wrong helped me learn faster. The next practices were the most frustrating because I was trying to work in the third ball. For about eight practices I had limited success with three balls. Luckily I had another friend who could tell me what I was doing wrong.
My problem was I was throwing the balls too fast and I needed to slow them down to be able to catch them. After six more practices I made progress to the point I was able to juggle the three balls about three or times before losing them. My mistake this time was that I was throwing the balls out and having to walk forward to catch them. This is an error made by many beginners. To help correct this mistake I started practicing facing a wall.
This barrier stopped me from moving forward. It helped but I was still unable to juggle for longer than six or seven cycles. Not being able to concentrate fully on juggling hindered my performance because I would lose control and track of the ball. One of the things that I found to help me was longer than 20 -minute practice sessions. It took me a while each practice to warm up and get in the pattern of juggling so with longer practice sessions, I had more success. Juggling is a serial skill with some decision making and some motor control.
It happens in an open environment because you have to utilize the process of perception, pattern recognition, and decision making to adjust the movement, often in a short amount of time, in response to changing environmental conditions. It involves complex reaction time because you have to be able to know where the balls are going quickly. There are three stages of motor learning that a person goes through when they are learning a new skill. The first is the verbal-cognitive stage, which is where you are learning to put the correct movements together usually using self-instruction. Inconsistent, timid, and inefficient movements, all of which I experienced characterize this stage. Next is the motor stage.
I spent a lot of time here trying to refine my movements. I never reached the last stage, autonomous. This stage takes a considerable amount of practice. Here I would have been able to juggle automatically, recognize my errors, and even add different skills such as walking sideways or bouncing the balls off the floor. Arousal levels affected much of my performance. An elevated arousal level can contribute to the production of ineffective movements.
A moderate arousal level would have been optimal but for most practices I was over aroused because of the audience and pressuring myself to do well. In my hyper vigilant state, my attention was narrowed and I was unable to see all of the things I was doing wrong. Another of my problems was attention. I had a hard time focusing only on the task at hand. My limited attention capacity to pay attention to more than a few things at a time hindered my juggling abilities. Juggling involves primarily closed-loop control.
In closed loop control you get information while performing the task and you are able to make adjustments. This is necessary in juggling to make corrections of the position of the ball or ball height. The closed loop system is effective in controlling slow, continuous actions, especially tracking movements, which are important in juggling. Visual tracking is required in juggling. You use focal vision to track all three of the balls in juggling.
Instead of staring at each individual ball, you watch in the middle. This involves a conscious effort. An error I made was watching the individual balls and losing all of them. Ambient vision on the other hand does not require conscious control. It functions to detect motion as well as the position of objects in the environment.
It contributes to the fine control of movement. Optical flow contributes by providing information allowing an individual to perceive motion, position, and timing of the balls. Spatial and temporal anticipation are used in juggling too. This is a way to cope with decision-making delays. These are important because they are used to predict where the balls are going and when the balls will get there. This knowledge allows me to initiate my movements much sooner or at a time that is appropriate to the demands of the environment.
A generalized motor program is a motor program that defines a pattern of movement rather than a specific movement. This allows the program to be adapted to produce variations of the pattern that meet the present need. For example when a person is presented with a new skill they should look back on past motor programs and adapt them to the present condition. Juggling was especially hard for me because I had little previous experience to go on. There was nothing in my background in which to draw the similar movements. Motivation was one aspect I was lacking.
This is essential in skill learning. I had little interest in learning to juggle. If I had really wanted to learn, I would have practiced harder and gotten more from the practices. Another part of juggling is goal setting. There are three parts of this ranging from the general to the specific. My outcome goal was to learn to juggle.
I told myself that I was going to complete five catches for my performance goal. My process goal was always to throw the balls at head height. Bibliography:
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Research essay sample on Closed Loop Control Learning A New Skill Juggling
