Modeling the Acquisition and Improvement of Motor Skkills

Abstract

This chapter discusses the acquisition and improvement of motor skills in human. The ability to manipulate the environment is one of the intrinsic features that demonstrates intelligence, and human intelligence is distinguished from that of other species by the sophisticate d level of such manipulation. Learning is an especially important issue to any model of human motor behavior as evidenced by contrasting the breadth and proficiency of an adult's motor skills to that of a child. A considerable tradition of research has developed that identifies numerous phenomena in human motor behavior. Several theories have come out of this tradition that attempt to account for a wide range of the phenomena. Although these theories have helped identify the important processes involved in human motor performance and learning, including both acquisition and improvement, they have mostly been presented as abstract models that leave the details of the individual processes unspecified. The evaluation of the candidate motor schemas is based on their predicted performance at the time of the failure point as opposed to measuring error across the entire movement as if the revised schemas were actually executed.