MODULE Motor Learning
Stages of Learning
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Cognitive Stage
​When you evaluate a performers skill level, you also should consider what stage of learning they are at. Psychologists Paul Fitts and Michael Posner identified three stages of learning.​
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Cognitive stage refers to the earliest stage of learning where the learner processes information (e.g. visual and verbal) in the attempt to develop a basic understanding of what to do (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). Learning a new skill is challenging and takes considerable cognitive activity and effort. Therefore, the performer will find it very difficult to attend to any additional information outside of actual movements required. This stage is characterised by many errors, large errors, and a lack of consistency; the process of trial and error is common.
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Associative stage – this stage involves steps found in the cognitive stage but as the fundamentals are now acquired, there are fewer performance errors and performance variability decreases. The learner is consciously making movement adjustments, but the skill starts to become more automated as the learner moves from knowing what to do, to how to do the task.
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Autonomous stage – is the final stage of learning where the learner can complete the skill more successfully. Performance is achieved with little cognitive attention, as skill execution has become a highly automated process. At this stage, the performer has a greater ability to attend to secondary tasks, and process additional information that is beneficial to performance. For example, a footballer at the autonomous stage can dribble the ball while simultaneously surveying the pitch for someone to pass it to. Whereas, an athlete in the cognitive stage will need to focus a large portion of their attention on the task of dribbling, which will limit their ability to peruse the pitch.
Associative Stage
Autonomous Stage
Novice performers are typically viewed as being in the cognitive stage, while experts reside in the autonomous stage. However, in my opinion this view is too simplistic, as an athlete will likely alternate between the different stages throughout their career.
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As athletes strive to improve, they will often revisit their technique as they look for further performance gains. E.g., a golfer may want to improve their backswing. Therefore, to learn the new move they will revert from the autonomous stage back to the cognitive stage, in regards to that technical change, and then work their way back again.
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Nick Faldo was an elite golfer playing who started playing on the USA and European PGA tours in the late 1970’s. However, he felt he needed to make some major changes to his technique to advance his game to a level where he could compete for major trophies. He made the decision to start working with a new coach (David Leadbetter) in 1985 to help rebuild his swing.
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The graph below shows Nick Faldo’s player ranking on USPGA and European Tour between 1981-1995 (ranking was calculated on how much money a player made on average for each event they played).
Nick’s performance dropped considerably at the time he began to work with his new coach. After a while, his performance improved and in 1987 he won the British Open (the first of his 6 career major titles).
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From a skill learning perspective, we could speculate that the drop in performance was a result of Nick reverting to an earlier stage of learning. Despite being an elite performer, he likely regressed (e.g. to the cognitive and associative stages), while he was ‘re-building’ his technique. It took Nick around a year for his performance to start improving, which was perhaps the amount of time it took for him to return to the autonomous stage.
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Being in the cognitive stage does not mean you are a novice in your sport and being in the automated stage does mean you are an expert in your sport. The stages of learning should be viewed as a fluid process.
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Contextual Interference
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Should you schedule a session with variable or blocked, massed or distributed, external or internal attention, etc. These questions are best answered within the Challenge Point Framework.
These need to be taken into consideration when structuring a practise session.
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(i.e., there is a ‘sweet spot’)
In the next section where we evaluate the different types of practice option s (e.g. blocked v variable, etc), you will see we base the appropriateness on When basing decisions on how to practise we need to return to the Challenge Point Framework to find the appropriate answer.
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Cognitive Stage