Continuous Motor Skills Research Articles

A qualitative exploration of the motor skills required for elite triathlon performance

PurposeThe purpose of this research was to investigate the beliefs, attitudes, and experiences of stakeholders in youth triathlon regarding the important motor subskills that are required to be successful at the elite level of triathlon competition. MethodTwenty-five participants were recruited from five stakeholder groups in triathlon and interviewed via video conference. A constructionist and relativist approach to thematic analysis was used to identify three first order themes and several second order themes. ResultsThe first, first order theme was ‘Continuous Motor Skills' which consisted of the invariant features of triathlon's continuous motor skills and the parameterization of continuous motor skills. The second, first order theme was ‘Discrete Motor Skills' and consisted of discrete motor skills involved with cornering and change of direction in each discipline and transition phases in triathlon. The final first order theme was ‘Adaptability in Continuous and Discrete Motor Skills'. ConclusionThis research provides a novel and more broad understanding of the beliefs, attitudes, and experiences of stakeholders in triathlon regarding important motor skills that are required to succeed at the elite level of the sport. This novel and broad understanding of important triathlon motor skills has theoretical implications for evaluating triathlon performance with skill acquisition as a primary focus. Additionally, this research is practically important for coaches, administrators, and athletic performance staff who design training programs and pathways for young, developing triathletes.

The patterning of local variability during the acquisition of a novel whole-body continuous motor skill in young adults.

There is increasing evidence that movement variability during motor skill acquisition plays a functional role. Specifically, initial variability might represent exploration of the possible motor space for solutions and error identification. Following practice, individuals might exploit a reduced amount of motor solutions to execute the task. While this variability pattern has been supported during discrete upper limb and multi-finger force tasks, there is a paucity of evidence for continuous whole-body motor tasks. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to characterize the role of variability during the acquisition of a whole-body continuous motor task across practice sessions in young adults. Twelve young adults aged 18-35-years participated in this study. Subjects practiced a novel, sagittal plane task, the kettlebell swing, using an online training video. We conducted an uncontrolled manifold analysis to partition local variability of the configuration of the kettlebell and body segments based on their impact on the position of the center-of-mass (COM) in the sagittal plane. Our results demonstrated that following initial practice, variability that did not affect the COM position remained elevated, suggesting sustained exploration of motor solutions. Following multiple practice sessions, variability related to motor solutions decreased, potentially indicating exploitation. The results from this study support the proposal that young adults initially utilize a range of motor solutions when acquiring a whole-body motor skill, followed by exploitation of stereotypic movement.

High-Performance Practice Processes

Despite their idiosyncrasies, motor and cognitive learning and endurance sports training have in common that they involve repeated practice. While considerable research has been devoted to the effect of practice on performance, little is known about optimal practice strategies. In this paper, we model the practice process for both skill acquisition and retention, and optimize its profile to maximize performance on a predefined date. For skill acquisition, we find that the optimal process involves multiple phases of practice increase and decrease, yielding U-shaped effort consistent with the principle of distributing practice, and that the transitions between phases are smoother for skills that are easily forgotten (e.g., cognitive skills) than for those that are easily retained (e.g., continuous motor skills). In particular for the latter, an extended period of rest should precede an ultimate high-intensity stress. For skill retention, the optimal practice strategy consists of cycles of either constant effort (for skills that are easily forgotten) or pulsed effort (for skills that are easily retained) consistent with the principle of alternating stress and rest. Our parametric model thus indicates when commonly used high-performance practice strategies are indeed optimal. This paper was accepted by Serguei Netessine, operations management.

The comparison of Imagery ability in elite, sub-elite and non-elite swimmers

The ability to generate and control mental images is present in all of us, but it differs from person to person. Therefore, it is important to understand that imagery ability can be changed through training and experimentation, it is not a fixed ability (Cumming & Williams, 2012). The aim of this study is to compare imagery ability in elite, sub-elite and non-elite athletes in a sport which involves closed and continuous motor skills, such as swimming. 79 swimmers (male N = 37; female N = 42) at an average age of 17 took part in this study. In order to assess imagery ability, the Movement Imagery Questionnaire 3 was used, Portuguese version (Mendes et al., 2016). After analysis of the results, these show that in each and every imagery modality, the scores in the three groups differ significantly. In kinesthetic and external visual imagery the elite and sub-elite groups’ scores, although not statistically different from each other, are significantly higher than those of the non-elite group. In internal visual imagery, the differences between all the compared pairs of groups are statistically significant. The elite group got the highest scores, followed by the sub-elite group average scores and finally the non-elite group average scores. According to these results, the conclusion is that athletes with better performance show greater imagery ability and that apparently the external visual imagery proved to be the best intervention method among swimming athletes.

External relative to internal attentional focus enhances motor performance and learning in visually impaired individuals

Background: Research has demonstrated the advantages of an external relative to internal focus of attention for enhancing motor performance and learning across diverse tasks, contexts and populations. However, research has yet to examine whether this finding holds true for individuals who have a major visual impairment in discrete and locomotion-based continuous motor tasks.Methods: In experiment 1, twenty-four visually impaired participants were asked to kick a soccer ball with their dominant foot to a target 7 meters away. Participants performed 10 trials within an internal focus (concentration on inside of the foot), external focus (concentration on the ball), and control (no focus instructions) conditions, in a counterbalanced order. In experiment 2, thirty-nine visually impaired adults were asked to ride a rehabilitation Pedalo for a distance of 7 meters. Participants were randomly assigned to either an internal focus (focus on the feet), external focus (focus on the platform), or control (no focus instructions) group. Retention and transfer tests were conducted on day 2.Results: An external focus resulted in more accurate kicks and faster pedalo movement times compared to an internal focus.Conclusions: These findings indicate that visual information does not mediate external focus benefits for motor performance and learning.Implications for RehabilitationPractitioners should use instructions that encourage visually impaired individuals who are going through rehabilitation to adopt an appropriate focus of attention for enhancing motor performance and learning of discrete or locomotion-based motor skills.Instructions that foster an external focus, relative to an internal focus, enhances performance of both discrete and continuous motor skills in individuals with visual impairment.

High-Performance Practice Processes

Despite their idiosyncrasies, motor and cognitive learning and endurance sports training have in common that they involve repeated practice. While considerable research has been devoted to the effect of practice on performance, little is known about optimal practice strategies. In this paper, we model the practice process for both skill acquisition and retention and optimize its profile to maximize performance on a predefined date. For skill acquisition, we find that the optimal process involves multiple it phases of practice increase and decrease, yielding U-shaped effort consistent with the principle of distributing practice, and that the transitions between phases are smoother for skills that are easily forgotten (e.g., cognitive skills) than for those that are easily retained (e.g., continuous motor skills). In particular for the latter, an extended period of rest should precede an ultimate high-intensity stress. For skill retention, the optimal practice strategy consists of cycles of either constant effort (for skills that are easily forgotten) or pulsed effort (for skills that are easily retained) consistent with the principle of alternating stress and rest. Our parametric model thus indicates when commonly used high-performance practice strategies are indeed optimal.

Deep intrinsically motivated continuous actor-critic for efficient robotic visuomotor skill learning

Abstract In this paper, we present a new intrinsically motivated actor-critic algorithm for learning continuous motor skills directly from raw visual input. Our neural architecture is composed of a critic and an actor network. Both networks receive the hidden representation of a deep convolutional autoencoder which is trained to reconstruct the visual input, while the centre-most hidden representation is also optimized to estimate the state value. Separately, an ensemble of predictive world models generates, based on its learning progress, an intrinsic reward signal which is combined with the extrinsic reward to guide the exploration of the actor-critic learner. Our approach is more data-efficient and inherently more stable than the existing actor-critic methods for continuous control from pixel data. We evaluate our algorithm for the task of learning robotic reaching and grasping skills on a realistic physics simulator and on a humanoid robot. The results show that the control policies learned with our approach can achieve better performance than the compared state-of-the-art and baseline algorithms in both dense-reward and challenging sparse-reward settings.

Nonlinear assessment of motor variability during practice and competition for individuals with different motivational orientations

The aim of the present study was to document how differing motivational orientation profiles, situated within environmental constraints (i.e., a competitive and practice environments) influence the nonlinear variability of performance and subsequent retention of a visual motor tracking skill. Myriad research associates atypical nonlinear aspects of motor variability with pathology; however, few empirical efforts have explored the influence of individual differences and environmental factors on nonlinear aspects of motor output and skill retention. Participants performed an isometric force-tracking task, matching the force indicated by a target line displayed across a computer screen. Dependent variables were performance outcome (root mean squared error) and the complexity of the produced signal (Sample Entropy) across practice, competition, and retention. Participants with high task orientation, regardless of high or low levels of ego orientation, exhibited the greatest visual motor tracking improvement as well as the greatest increases in irregularity of force variability from practice to competition and retention. We conclude that individual differences play a key role in the structure of continuous behavior, and that this structure influences the learning of continuous motor skills.

Practicing with gradual increases in contextual interference enhances visuomotor learning

The purpose of this study was to determine if practicing with gradual increases in contextual interference (CI) facilitated the learning of a continuous motor skill that required visuomotor tracking. We hypothesized the group that practiced with increasing amounts of CI would perform significantly better on a retention and transfer test compared to participants that practiced with blocked and random scheduling. A total of 78 participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups (i.e. Blocked, Increasing, Random). The level of CI was modified by varying the number of revolutions per minute (RPM) on a rotary pursuit tracker. Following the acquisition phase, participants returned after a 24-hour period and completed the 12-trial retention and transfer test. The results of statistical analysis indicated that all three groups improved their performance during practice. The posttest analysis indicated the Increasing group was better than the Blocked and Random groups on the retention and transfer test.

Effects of Specific versus Variable Practice on the Retention and Transfer of a Continuous Motor Skill

The effects of specific versus variable practice on retention and transfer was investigated. 30 participants were randomly assigned to one of three practice conditions. The variable speed group practiced on a pursuit rotor task at three different speeds (60, 45, 30 rpm) which were randomly distributed but equal in number for 30 10-sec. trials on Day 1. The Specific Practice group performed all 30 10-sec. trials at 45 rpm on Day 1. On Day 2, all groups performed 15 trials at the 45-rpm retention speed and 15 trials at the 75-rpm transfer speed. The Control group only performed on Day 2. Analysis showed the Specific Practice group had significantly higher scores on Day 1. On Day 2, the Specific Practice group had significantly higher retention scores and the Variable Practice group had higher transfer scores. Continuous motor skills might be practiced differently depending on the environmental context in which the skill may be used.

Progressive Speed Practice in Learning a Continuous Motor Skill

Abstract The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of progressive and gradually increasing speed practice on motor skill acquisition using the pursuit rotor. Subjects in the three treatment groups were given 2 days of practice at gradually increasing speeds while the control group practiced at the criterion speed. On the third day all groups performed 12 transfer trials at the criterion speed. Randomized ANOVA and Treatment X Subjects analysis were computed on the last nine transfer trials. No significant differences were observed among the groups for any of the transfer trials. There was no significant improvement in performance within groups during transfer trials. These findings suggest that the appropriate spatial and temporal organization necessary to perform a continuous motor task can be acquired as efficiently through a gradual and progressive increase in speed as through a program of constant practice at the criterion speed.