Theories Of Skill Acquisition Research Articles

PEER INTERACTION AND CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK FOR ACCURACY AND FLUENCY DEVELOPMENT

This quasi-experimental study is aimed at (a) teaching learners how to provide corrective feedback (CF) during peer interaction and (b) assessing the effects of peer interaction and CF on second language (L2) development. Four university-level English classes in Japan participated (N= 167), each assigned to one of four treatment conditions. Of the two CF groups, one was taught to provide prompts and the other to provide recasts. A third group participated in only peer-interaction activities, and a fourth served as the control group. After one semester of intervention, the two CF groups improved in both overall accuracy and fluency, measured as unpruned and pruned speech rates, whereas the peer-interaction-only group outperformed the control group only on fluency measures. This study draws on monitoring in speech-production theory and the declarative-procedural model of skill-acquisition theory to interpret these results, thus contributing a new theoretical approach to CF research in the context of peer interaction in which learners can be providers of CF. It is concluded that whereas peer interaction offered opportunities for repeated production practice, facilitating proceduralization, CF sharpened learners’ ability to monitor both their own language production and that of their interlocutors.

The role of cue utilisation and adaptive interface design in the management of skilled performance in operations control

The operational control of complex systems such as power control and air traffic control is increasingly relegated to advanced technology devices with the expectation that operations controllers will maintain oversight of system and intervene where appropriate. Moreover, the centralisation of operations control has resulted in the oversight of systems remotely, typically through a human–machine interface. This article discusses the principles that underlie the design of interfaces for remote systems, drawing on theories of skill acquisition to address the needs of less experienced operators who are increasingly being engaged as operations controllers. Specifically, adaptive interfaces are advocated that are designed to facilitate the progression to expertise. Using cue utilisation as an underlying theoretical perspective, interfaces can be designed to extract and emphasise the relationship between features and events that eventually form the basis of the cues employed by expert practitioners.

AN INITIAL INVESTIGATIONof theApplicabilityof theDreyfus Skill Acquisition Modelto theProfessional DevelopmentofNurse Educators

This investigation represents an attempt to design and validate a skill acquisition model for the nurse educator role. The preparation and role development of nurse educators has become a significant focus for the profession.The NLN Nurse Educator Competencies and skill acquisition theory provide a basis for studying skill acquisition among nurse educators. A total of 339 nurse educators from North Carolina and West Virginia were surveyed using an instrument designed to assess skill among nurse educators. The survey discriminated among five levels of skill (novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient, and expert). Participants reported a proficient level of total skill acquisition and a proficient level for each of the eight NLN Nurse Educator Competencies. Internal consistency for the survey tool was high at .977. Results of this study add to the body of knowledge of skill acquisition, role development, and transition.The study provides a unique method to study skill acquisition.

A THEORY OF THE MIND AS A COMPLEX SYSTEM

Five principles of skill acquisition are presented based on a review of research on human learning and expertise. Essentially these principles state that practice leads to faster and more efficient uses of knowledge. This enables faster performance and results in less demand on mental resources. In turn these outcomes enable higher level behaviours to be attempted. Ultimately skills are developed through refinement of many component processes. A theory of the mind is proposed that borrows from theories of complex adaptive systems. In this theory, the mind is conceived of as consisting of agents that compete for resources associated with processing information. The nature of this competition is similar to that observed in physical and biological systems in that agents survive or disappear depending on their usefulness. This theory is shown to be capable of explaining the five principles of skill acquisition, without these principles being explicitly built into the theory. Implications for other theories of skill acquisition are considered.

Is cognitive ability a liability? A critique and future research agenda on skilled performance.

Over a century of psychological research provides strong and consistent support for the idea that cognitive ability correlates positively with success in tasks that people face in employment, education, and everyday life. Recent experimental research, however, has converged on a different and provocative conclusion, namely that lower-ability people can actually be more effective performers within special environments characterized by features such as time pressure, social evaluation, and unpredictable task change. If this conclusion is true, it has extensive implications for practices such as personnel selection, training design, and teaching methods. The current article reexamines and reinterprets this research within the context of well-established resource theories of cognitive processing and skill acquisition leading to a less provocative conclusion that serves to reiterate the benefits of cognitive ability for task performance. Following this reexamination, we conclude by providing a research agenda for examining the determinants of skilled performance in dynamic task environments, including the following: (a) broadening the range of abilities and task difficulties examined, (b) considering the role of nonability traits and goals in skilled performance (e.g., personality, learning, and performance goals), (c) investigating the processes (e.g., problem solving strategies) that people use in complex environments, (d) developing research designs and analytic strategies for examining adaptive performance, and (e) investigating how best to train for adaptive performance.

Performing New Tasks with Old Skills: Is Prediction Possible?

This research evaluated the extent to which power functions can predict performance on a task when performance context has been altered. Since power functions reliably describe performance improvements during practice, an assumption implicit in some theories of skill acquisition and transfer is that transfer performance will continue to improve as an extrapolation of the practice power function. In the training phase of the current experiment, 120 participants practiced solving simple problems from the six times table. In the transfer phase, these same problems were presented again, intermixed with problems from one of six conditions differing in various respects to the target problems. With the exception of two of these six conditions, performance on the target problems was slower than was predicted by training phase power function extrapolations. These findings are discussed in relation to theories of skill acquisition and the

The automatization of verbal morphology in instructed second language acquisition

According to information-processing accounts of skill acquisition, learner performance becomes more automatic over time and with practice, requiring less attention, time, and cognitive effort (DeKeyser, Skill acquisition theory, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007a). This study set out to provide converging evidence for the development of automatization of verbal morphology in comprehension and production. Eighty-five university-level L2 learners of Italian were assigned to one of three proficiency levels and completed a picture identification task and a picture description task. Reaction times (RT), error rates, and coefficients of variation (CV) were analyzed. Results overall revealed that there was evidence of increasing automatization of verbal morphology with increasing proficiency. However, differences were found between comprehension and production, and depending on the measure used. Findings are discussed in the context of SLA automaticity and implications for classroom learning. The study contributes to the continuing efforts to define and measure automaticity, and lends support to the suggestion that converging evidence is needed for automaticity and automatization to be useful constructs in SLA.

Student nurses’ perceptions of learning in a perioperative placement

The aim of this study was to explore undergraduate nurses' perioperative specialist clinical experience and the impact this experience has on their perceptions of aspects of perioperative nursing. Perioperative nursing is a highly specialized nursing practice, which is often underutilized for undergraduate clinical placement experience. The environment is perceived as technological. Experts recognize the extensive learning opportunities available to undergraduate nurses' in this environment. This study explores how this specialist environment facilitates undergraduate student nurses' learning in an Australian context. The methodological approach used Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenology. The study was underpinned by Benner's novice-to-expert skill acquisition theory. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with six third-year undergraduate nursing students following a perioperative clinical placement experience. Data were collected in December 2005. The findings of this study identify aspects of perioperative nursing and the perioperative environment interpreted through the lens of each participant. Three themes were identified from the data: aspects of nursing care, skill acquisition and the clinical learning environment in a perioperative setting. Each participant gained insight not only into perioperative nursing but also into its relationship to the general nature of nursing in a specialist setting. The preparation of novice nurses in a perioperative environment should include preparing them to identify the differences in patient care in an alternative setting. A consensus is required in Australia regarding the aspects of generalist nursing care, which need to be visible and clearly articulated for the novice by competent perioperative nurses.

Skill-based differences in the cognitive mechanisms underlying failure under stress

Studies of “choking under pressure” suggest novices choke because attention is distracted away from the primary task. In contrast with the traditional research on stress and performance, where additional resources made available with increasing skill can ameliorate the effects of stress, experts are thought to degrade because stress draws attention to, and disrupts, previously proceduralized performance. Two kinds of dual-tasks, extraneous and skill-focused, were used to examine skill-based differences in attentional demands of a live-fire, handgun shooting task. Expert and novice police officers completed shooting trials under moderate time pressure. Contrary to choking research findings, the performance of experts was not adversely affected by skill-focused attention whereas novices were. This pattern was also reflected in a range of process measures. The results challenge currently accepted explanations of choking under pressure, and suggest that the degree to which expert performance is cognitively mediated may be greater than previously assumed. Implications for traditional theories of skill acquisition and for training to perform in stressful environments are discussed.

The effect of equipment scaling on the skill acquisition of beginning tennis players

In this study, we examined the effectiveness of equipment scaling (tennis ball modification and court size) on beginner tennis player skill acquisition and associated psychological responses within a structured competitive development/participation programme. The participants' ability to rally and their stroke proficiency were recorded before and after a 5-week acquisition phase. Coupled to these dependent measures were within-practice session recording of hitting opportunities, resultant success, and the affective measure of session happiness. The participants who practised using a standard ball and standard court (adult constraints) were afforded a significantly poorer learning experience relative to the other ball/court scaling combinations. In particular, the adult standardized intervention group recorded significantly less hitting opportunities on the forehand and backhand side than the scaled-court intervention conditions. The decreased hitting opportunities experienced within the standardized adult condition then flowed into significantly poorer hitting success relative to the scaled court groups. The modified ball/scaled court intervention group rated their experience significantly happier than the standardized adult group. Discussion centres on the stronger learning effect generated by court scaling relative to the influence of ball type and the broader application of these findings to skill acquisition theory and practice.

Feldenkrais Method balance classes are based on principles of motor learning and postural control retraining: a qualitative research study

Background Feldenkrais Method balance classes have been found to be effective in improving balance in recent studies, but there has been little research into possible mechanisms behind the effectiveness of these classes. Indeed, there has been little research into the content of any balance training classes. Objectives To analyse the content of a series of Feldenkrais Method balance classes to gain an understanding of how the results in these studies may have been achieved and the principles through which the method may be effective. Design Qualitative research approach (content analysis). Method Feldenkrais Method Awareness Through Movement lessons were transcribed and the contents were analysed. An intercoder reliability study was undertaken. Results The content analysis revealed that the classes used motor skill acquisition elements of internal feedback, repetition and variability of practice using an exploratory learning approach. Postural control skills of intersegmental coordination of ankle/hip/trunk synergies were practised, with control of the centre of mass over the base of support explored in anterior/posterior, medio/lateral, diagonal, rotational and circular directions. Key findings were the extensive involvement of trunk flexibility and control in the balance activities, and also the intensive attention to internal feedback which was linked to body awareness training. Conclusion The Awareness Through Movement lessons contained many elements consistent with current theories of motor skill acquisition and postural control, providing a sound theoretical basis for the effectiveness of the Feldenkrais approach in improving balance. The methodology used in this study may provide a useful model for similar investigations into other balance training approaches.

Loss of cognitive skill across delays: Constraints for theories of cognitive skill acquisition.

Mastering a cognitive skill requires many practice sessions, occurring over a period of days, weeks, months, or even years. Although a large body of research describes and explains gains made within a given practice session, few studies have investigated what happens to these gains across a delay, and none have examined effects of delays on item-general gains. Across 3 experiments, participants performed alphabet arithmetic verification in an initial practice session followed by a test session after a delay (from 0 to 30 days). All experiments included conditions yielding item-general practice gains; Experiments 2-3 also included an item-specific practice condition. Surprisingly, item-general gains were relatively well preserved across a delay (e.g., only 6.7% decrease in practice effects after 2 days), whereas item-specific gains showed sizeable losses across a delay (e.g., 25.9% loss after 2 days). Results provide important empirical constraints to theories of cognitive skill acquisition.

The Relationship Between Second Language Acquisition Theory and Computer‐Assisted Language Learning

The point of departure for this article is the contrast between the theoretical landscape within view of language teaching professionals in 1991 and that of today. I argue that the pragmatic goal of computer‐assisted language learning (CALL) developers and researchers to create and evaluate learning opportunities pushes them to consider a variety of theoretical approaches to second language acquisition (SLA), which have developed, in part, in response to the need to theorize the role of instruction in SLA. To illustrate connections between SLA and CALL, I touch on multiple theoretical perspectives grouped into four general approaches: cognitive linguistic (Universal Grammar, autonomous induction theory, and the concept‐oriented approach); psycholinguistic (processibility theory, input processing theory, interactionist theory); human learning (associative–cognitive CREED, skill acquisition theory); and language in social context (sociocultural, language socialization, conversation analysis, systemic–functional, complexity theory). I suggest that such theoretical approaches can be useful in the development and evaluation of CALL materials and tasks. Finally, I propose that the expanding use of technology changes the nature of communicative competence theory, challenges SLA theory, and increases the number of consumers for SLA research.

Promoting a skills-based agenda in Olympic sports: The role of skill-acquisition specialists

We highlight the importance of promoting a skills-based agenda in the development and preparation of Olympic athletes. The role that specialists with a background in skill acquisition can play is illustrated and the need to move towards a culture where evidence-based practice permeates all aspects of this process reiterated. We provide examples from contemporary research to illustrate how skill-acquisition theory and practice can help inform and guide practitioners, coaches, and administrators in their quest to develop Olympic athletes. Although the acquisition and refinement of skills are essential to performance in most Olympic sports, paradoxically the area of skill acquisition has not impacted in a concerted and meaningful way on this agenda. Skill-acquisition specialists need to be more proactive in forging links with elite sport, whereas practitioners, coaches, and administrators need to appreciate the important role that sports scientists with a background in this area can play in helping to develop future generations of podium athletes.

Training for Emergencies

Disaster triage embodies all key features of dynamic decision making. Multiple decisions have to be made under time pressure and workload. Situations are often unpredictable requiring trainees to apply learned routines to novel conditions. Up to this point, psychologic theories of learning can provide only little support on how to train disaster responders for these challenging situations. We summarize and illustrate several examples of dynamic decision-making research using simulations and microworlds as a starting point for a new theory of learning and skill acquisition in disaster triage. We describe MEDIC, a microworld in the context of medical diagnosis, and other simple tasks designed to gather people's understanding of accumulation, a basic component of dynamic tasks. Using a microworld called MEDIC, we demonstrate the difficulties of learning to be effective at medical decision making and present a set of theoretical constructs that help to explain those difficulties. Implications for how to overcome them are also discussed. On the basis of this kind of research and our instance-based learning theory, we develop principles for the design of effective disaster training and for building a theoretical framework that can systematically predict how to best train for successful performance in disaster situations. Finally, we also demonstrate the difficulty of understanding dynamic systems; educated adults with medical expertise have trouble understanding even simple dynamic medical problems. Dynamic decision-making research can be used as a theoretical and empirical reference for advancing pediatric triage training to prepare trainees for disaster triage. Recommendations for effective learning derived from dynamic decision-making research are presented.

A Situated Cognitive Model of the Routine Evolution of Skills

This paper presents a cognitive model for the routine evolution of skills in a photocopying task. In the classic study by Agre and Shrager (1990), it was found that although speedup in performance conformed to the power law of practice, microgenetic activities of the subject showed multiple stages of qualitative changes as the subject repeated the same task. The evolution of skills was shown to be more appropriately characterized by a “situated”, dialectic relationship between the subject and the environment than by a set of general mental mechanisms as in traditional theories of skill acquisition. This paper attempts to bridge the gap between these two perspectives of skill acquisition by showing how the dialectic relationship can be characterized by a traditional information processing model by making a few additional assumptions of the relationship between the human and the environment. A model based on the ACT-R architecture was constructed, which provided good fits, both qualitatively and quantitatively, to the data collected by Agre and Shrager. The model demonstrated how multiple mechanisms could be implemented in a cognitive architecture to explain both qualitative and quantitative changes at both the macro and micro levels of analysis. Implications to human factors research are discussed.

Extended Book Review: Dynamics of Skill Acquisition: A Constraints-Led Approach

This is an upper-level undergraduate or graduate textbook for courses in human movement and skill acquisition. A professional reference for movement practitioners and scientists, including teachers, coaches, physical educators, physical therapists, rehabilitation specialists, sport scientists, psychologists, biomechanists, and physiologists. The book provides a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of the constraints-led perspective, a recognized theory in motor learning and control. It outlines the development of a conceptual model of coordination and control within a multidisciplinary framework, capturing the various interlocking scales of analysis (e.g., neural, behavioral, psychological) and the many subsystems (e.g., perceptual and movement) involved in producing behavior. A conceptual model of coordination and control is important not just for designing learning environments, but it is also important for ensuring that learners gain positive experiences when acquiring motor skills. Practitioners and students will appreciate the applied focus which outlines a model of human movement with specific constraints-led approach strategies that address skill acquisition across a variety of professions, including teaching, coaching, and rehabilitation. By learning both the theoretical origins and applications for implementing a constraints-led approach to movement skill acquisition, readers will gain insight into how the informed organization of learning and rehabilitation environments produces more effective and efficient use of practice and therapy time. Contents: Traditional theories of skill acquisition -- Physical constraints on coordination : dynamical systems theory -- Informational constraints on coordination : an ecological perspective -- Redefining learning : a constraints-led approach -- Understanding the dynamics of skill acquisition -- Dealing with individual differences : implications for a nonlinear pedagogy -- Organizing practice to optimize learning -- Using verbal guidance as an informational constraint on learners -- Observational learning as directed search -- Implementing the constraints-led approach: case studies.

Recognizing Clinical Excellence at All Levels of Practice

The authors describe the development and implementation of a program to recognize the clinical practice of clinicians from 6 different disciplines: nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, respiratory therapy, social work, and speech-language pathology. The program, which is grounded on skill acquisition theory, offers direct care practitioners a well-defined pathway for clinical development by recognizing and celebrating all levels of practice, from the beginning practitioner to the seasoned expert.

Positive transfer and negative transfer/antilearning of problem-solving skills.

In problem-solving research, insights into the relationship between monitoring and control in the transfer of complex skills remain impoverished. To address this, in 4 experiments, the authors had participants solve 2 complex control tasks that were identical in structure but that varied in presentation format. Participants learned to solve the 2nd task on the basis of their original learning phase from the 1st task or learned to solve the 2nd task on the basis of another participant's learning phase. Experiment 1 showed that, under conditions in which the participant's learning phase was experienced twice, performance deteriorated in the 2nd task. In contrast, when the learning phases in the 1st and 2nd tasks differed, performance improved in the 2nd task. Experiment 2 introduced instructional manipulations that induced the same response patterns as those in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, further manipulations were introduced that biased the way participants evaluated the learning phase in the 2nd task. In Experiment 4, judgments of self-efficacy were shown to track control performance. The implications of these findings for theories of complex skill acquisition are discussed.

Skill instruction in outdoor leadership: A comparison of a direct instruction model and a discovery-learning model

In this paper I discuss some of the strengths and weaknesses of two different approaches to teaching motor skills to students in outdoor education and outdoor recreation settings. Using acronyms to describe their stages: DEDICTis a six step, direct instructional model that some outdoor leaders may already be familiar with; and FERAL is my adaptation of a discovery learning approach that can be used to teach students and participants skills. It ismy premise that both models are theoretically sound in terms of motor skill acquisition theory and the physical education literature on skill instruction. I discuss and critique both models with reference to the theories of motor learning, the stages of skill acquisition, the role of feedback, the characteristics of effective practice, the value of demonstrations, the role of verbal instructions, and experiential Ieaming theory. Finally, I offer some recommendations on how to optimise the effectiveness of skill instruction in outdoor leadership using both models.