Understanding Motor Task Mechanisms and Learning

Motor Task Mechanisms and Their Role in Learning

1. Decision Mechanism: The decision mechanism involves choosing or selecting responses for action. Some tasks, like the high jump, have a minimal decision component, while others have a complex and critical decision-making process for successful execution.

2. Motor Task Components: All motor tasks involve an execution mechanism. However, not all have significant perceptual (information about the environment) or decision (choice possibilities) components. Motor tasks should be analyzed based on their learning requirements.

3. Sequential Mechanisms: Motor tasks involve a sequence of mechanisms:

• Decision Mechanism
• Perceptual Mechanism
• Execution Mechanism

4. Feedback Loops: Welford's simplified feedback scheme includes "knowledge of execution" and "knowledge of results," which are highly relevant for educational practice. Tasks can be categorized as:

• Control tasks: Predominantly perceptual and open (external regulation).
• Team sports tasks: Predominantly mixed, regular, and self-regulated.
• Closed tasks: Gymnastics and similar activities with varying characteristics (e.g., skiing, chess).

5. Selective Attention and Anticipation: During learning, individuals must identify environmental characteristics, developing selective attention. The ability to anticipate actions is crucial, originating from correctly intercepting perceptual stimuli before the results materialize.

6. Phases of Motor Learning:

• Cognitive Phase (Initial/Perceptual): The subject encounters new and awkward movements, acquiring a stock of varied associative schemes.
• Motor Phase (Intermediate/Decisional): Movements become more refined, major errors disappear, and movements are no longer clumsy, although difficulties may persist in complex actions.
• Autonomous Phase (Final/Execution): Movements become highly similar to reflexes, requiring no conscious attention. Once learned, gestures can be performed reflexively, even involuntarily.

7. Common Features of Motor Tasks: All three motor tasks require highly coordinated neuromuscular activity, aiming to adjust the movement to a specific technical performance model. Therefore, they share a high demand on the execution mechanism.