Investigating Skill Acquisition
The majority of sports require constant decision making. Once the
brain as received information, made sense of it and organised the
information a decision can be made. This decision will start a plan of
action, and it is then vital that we make this decision as quickly as
possible. the space between a stimulus being presented and the
performers response to it is called reaction time.
Reaction time is often overlooked and usually underestimated in the
preparation process for athletes. What we usually refer to as
‘explosiveness’ is often actually great reaction time. In just about
all sports you will find a constant series of reactions to auditory
and visual cues. A players ability to respond quickly, properly and
precisely to the information being sent is very important in
determining their success in the sport.
“Reaction time - the time between the first presentation of a stimulus
and the performers reaction”
Movement time - the time between the first reaction to the stimulus
and the completion of movement
Response time - the time from the presentation of the stimulus to the
completion of the movement” (J Stafford-Brown, et al, 2003)
Therefore Response Time = reaction time + movement time
In order to be a skilled performer the ability to combine quick
reactions with quick movements is vital in order to be able to respond
to stimuli effectively. For example in 100m sprinting the most
successful sprinter is going to be the one who exerts pressure onto
the blocks by his feet after hearing the stimuli (starting gun) first
and then moving his feet off the blocks first. this is because his
quick combination of reaction and movement time has given him the
quickest response time, from the moment he heard the starting gun to
the moment both feet left the blocks. he is then going to have an
advantage over his components because he will already be getting into
his running stride while the rest of them are still responding.
Matthew L. Sanders discusses the necessity of taking responsibility for one’s own education in a section of his book Becoming a Learner: Realizing the Opportunity of Education. In this section, Sanders explains how he initially blamed an instructor for not teaching him sufficiently and then learned that “No matter what kind of teacher you have, no matter what kind of class you are taking, if you are a learner you will set out to understand the material and create opportunities for success.” This statement is true and the concept can be applied through many methods to create success for students if they are willing to put forth effort.
Reaction time is key in Touch Football because you must react very fast when you are defending and someone is trying to step you or throw a dummy to get past you or to intercept a longball.
For example, some golfers wouldn't clearly think about which club to use when faced with the decision under pressure, and fumble on their choice. In another example, a basketball player called a timeout after he had gained control of the ball 11 seconds till the game ends. Unfortunately, they were only a point behind, but there were not any timeouts left. This caused a technical foul, and in turn helped seal the other teams win. She clearly says in the article, “you can't just not think”(Dobbs). An athlete has to make decisions, and think clearly when the time comes. Especially in baseball when you had to adjust you're hit to the pitchers throw. Athletes also benefit when thinking clearly about decisions under pressure.
Basketball is a "transition game. Players continuously switch between defensive and offensive plays throughout the game. The plays include strenuous physical, such as running/sprinting, cutting, feints, jumps, and landings. Rapid turns and proximity during one-on-one situations increase the possibility of physical contact. Thus, frequent intermittent running and sprinting characterize the action of the game. Motion analysis has shown that depending on individual playing-time; basketball players cover a distance between 4.6 and 5.8 km per game, with mean heart rates between 80 and 90% of individual maximum heart rates (European Network for Sports injuries prevention, 2008). Consequently, players need to rid of highly advanced basic...
a player to win a toss up she will have a better reaction time than
In sports, you make split second decisions based off your reaction times. If a basketball team were in a game and one teammate was able to get free from his opponent for a second but his teammate with the ball could not reaction fast enough, he would miss his opportunity to score than play. According to the test takes by the American Association of Health, if a man and a women were put into the same predicament, the man would do better than the
Creative new training methods, developed by coaches, athletes and sport scientists, are aimed to help improve the quality and quantity of athletic training ( Kellmann, 2010, p.1). However, these methods have encountered a consistent set of barriers including overtraining ( Kellmann, 2010, p.1). Due to these barriers, the need for physical and mental recovery in athletics brought an increasing attention in practice and in research ( Kellmann, 2010, p.1).
Why do we do what we do? This is one question that summarizes the motive for psychology. The answer to this question is the reason why I declared psychology as my major. Current psychologists and those dating back to the year 1879, strove to achieve the answer to this reoccurring question. “The Father of Psychology”, Wilhelm Wundt, and those psychologists of-age, have been strenuously consulting and researching to truly understand the mind and its effect on human behavior. Over the last 127 years, an accumulation of various answers to that specific question have been made. In this paper, the main focus will be the working memory in athletics; how the conscious movements become unconscious and almost instinct-like, and how coaches can teach their athletes better, using explicit and implicit technique.
Sports psychology is an essential field of psychological study, which emphasizes the importance of performance enhancement through training your psychological and mental abilities. Sports psychology is a specialization within brain psychology and kinesiology and it seeks to understand psychological/mental factors that affect performance in sports, physical activity, and apply this knowledge in order to enhance individual and team performance. As we make advancements in science we grasp the increasing importance of the human mind, thus exponentially increasing the value and power of thought. As contrary to popular belief, every thought we think, and every word we say before a race/event can trigger a major effect upon your ending results, whether it may be positive or negative. It is thoughts that are conjured before an event that can make or break a race, thus putting the utmost of importance on self-affirmation and motivational thinking in the pre event stages of a race (or an event). The main aspects that play a considerable role in a successful athletic performance are motivation and self-efficacy.
Learning styles are how individuals approach learning new concepts based on their strengths, weaknesses, and preferences. Acquiring and being aware of your learning styles is beneficial to accurately processing information that could be used for intellectual growth. Furthermore, learning styles are a part of how humans function and receive information from their world, so not being properly informed about this concept could bloom confusion, dysfunction, and chaos in society. Each learning style has a different goal and approach in interpreting information based on each individual’s abilities and should be regarded as being such. Nonetheless, it is a complex system that is produced to simplify and make sense of our world. Read/write was the
Kolb explains that “different people naturally prefer a certain single different learning style. Various factors influence a person's preferred style: notably in his experiential learning theory model (ELT) Kolb defined three stages of a person's development and suggests that our propensity to reconcile and successfully integrate the four different learning styles improves as we mature through our development stages. The development stages that Kolb identified are:
Sports psychology continues to evolve in order to ensure that comprehensive and evidence-based psychological services are available for athletes and teams. Giving athletes an understanding of their psychological functioning, and building the ability to implement a range of psychological strategies in competition enables athletes to both execute their skills and thrive under pressure as they strive to reach their performance potential.
Mastering one’s self is essential in reaching one’s full potential. In this paper I will attempt to articulate what it means to achieve personal mastery. I will first provide my own personal portrayal of personal mastery. Following, I will illustrate examples from my life, and what personal mastery means to me.
The overall essence of education or knowledge acquisition is reflected in an axiom by Confucius which says “Tell me, and I will forget; show me, and I will remember; but involve me, and I will understand. Back then, it was clear that learning was a comprehensive process which involves passionate exchanges between students and their teachers; unfortunately this is not the case in most modern classrooms. Instead of the expected bidirectional communication between learners and teachers, in the modern learning environment there is a unidirectional system which involves the teacher incessantly hurling facts at students who, due to their passive roles as mere receptacles, have fallen asleep or; in the case of “best” students are mindlessly taking notes. This leads to a situation where knowledge has neither been conferred nor acquired.
The reaction time for subject with increase complexity is the focus of this study. The ten respondents were randomly selected on the campus of University Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Ten subjects reaction time was evaluated with a computer simulation program using one, two, or four choice trails, which lasted forty to sixty minutes. The data were analyzed using t test and ANOVA. The t test showed no significance as far as practice effects were concerned, but inferences can be made. Also the ANOVA showed a significant difference with reaction time as it relates to complexity. I found that as the level of complexity increase so does the reaction time.