Motor Behavior Basics
This broad field studies how people move, why they move as they do, and how movement changes across life.
What is motor behavior?
In this early theory, a stimulus produces a response, and voluntary movement can result from chains of responses.
What is reflex theory?
This interval begins when a stimulus appears and ends when movement starts.
What is reaction time?
What is a fine motor skill?
A beginner talks through every step, makes frequent errors, and needs clear demonstrations. Fitts and Posner assign the learner to this stage.
What is the cognitive stage?
A child becomes more coordinated as growth and maturation occur. This area of study examines that change across the lifespan.
What is motor development?
This theory describes the nervous system like an organization in which higher brain centers direct lower centers.
What is hierarchical theory?
When the number of possible stimulus-response choices increases, decision time generally increases according to this law.
What is Hick's law?
The performer chooses when to begin a free throw, placing it in this pacing category.
What is a self-paced skill?
A learner detects some errors, performs more consistently, and benefits from more specific feedback. This is the second Fitts and Posner stage.
What is the associative stage?
A student performs well today because of caffeine and motivation, but the improvement disappears tomorrow. This reflects a change in this, no necessily learning.
What is motor performance?
A therapist emphasizes processing information, selecting a stored movement plan, and adjusting its force and duration. This theory guides the approach.
What is information-processing or motor-programming theory?
A driver responds to a braking car, then reacts late to a pedestrian who steps out immediately afterward. This processing delay explains the second response.
What is the psychological refractory period?
A triple jump combines several brief actions in a required order, placing it in this category based on the nature of the skill.
What is a serial skill?
A novice reduces the movement problem by keeping several joints stiff, Berstein calls this first-stage strategy this.
What is freezing the degrees of freedom?
Opening a heavy door while balancing a backpack demonstrates this everyday study of movement rather than merely thinking about movement.
What is motor behavior?
A low chair, lower-extremity weakness, and a slippery floor represent these three categories in Newell's model.
What are task, individual, and environmental constraints?
Listening to spoken directions while visually tracking traffic may interfere less than two visual tasks because they draw on different limited pools. This theory explains why.
What is multiple-resource theory?
Batting a pitched baseball requires the performer to respond to changing conditions and outside timing. Name both classifications.
What are an open skill and an externally paced skill?
After practice stops for one week, a learner performs the same skill again. This assessment determines whether improvement persisted.
What is a retention test?
A person sees a curb, determines its height, and adjusts the step to clear it. This motor-control problem describes how sensory infomration guides movement.
What is the perceptual-motor integration problem?
A chair may offer sitting to one person, but not to a small child who cannot climb on it. The ecological approach calls these person-specific opportunities for action this.
What are affordances?
This mental workspace temporarily holds and manipulates information while a person plans a movement.
What is working memory?
Strength, flexibility, reaction time, and coordination help people learn and perform skills. Unlike skills, these underlying characteristics have the name.
What are abilities?
Gentile recommends this practice goal for a closed skill and this different goal for an open skill during the second stage of learning.
What are fixation and diversification?