Chapter 3 Human Skill and Motor Control: Some Aspects of the Motor Control - Motor Learning Relation

Abstract

This chapter describes some aspects of the motor control and motor learning relation. The chapter recapitulates some of the changes in perspective that have taken place in the field and discusses their value for an integrative perspective on motor control and psychomotor skill acquisition. In the chapter, the theoretical part of the steps from research on motor control to problems of skill acquisition and training are explored. The presentation is organized around two polarities—motor control or motor learning and prescriptive/emergent theories. Within the two frameworks the changing conceptualization and contrasts of motor control or motor learning are traced and compared. In addition, the chapter presents the short historical perspective of recent motor control or motor learning approaches. It explores the motor control tenets of a selection of theories under the two categories outlined in the chapter. The chapter concludes with an experimentation discussion in which original experiments on motor control and learning, from both a computational and an ecological perspective, are presented and explained.