Discuss the role of feedback in the learning of skills

How they help with the learning of skills:

1. Intrinsic feedback – Alter skills and tell whether a person is doing a skill right or wrong, by the changes felt by the senses.

2. Extrinsic feedback – An outside person tells the person what they think is wrong or right with the skill and so it can be adjusted.

3. Knowledge of Results – If the outcome of a match is a winning score, the person knows that they performed well in that game. It also accounts for the opposite, but other factors need to be considered such as situation and opposition.

4. Knowledge of Performance – Getting outside information, where one looks at their position and performance over a long time and making amendments to skills along the way.

Feedback should be…

• Limited – processing information in small amounts, processed easier, understood properly (especially in early stages).
• Specific – one can then focus more on what is important.

Football positions – giving feedbacks that relates to the certain position.

• Immediate – feedback is given straight after completion of an activity, the performer can relate to the activity with strong memory.
• Individualised – feedback given specifically to one person, not a as group.

Netball – Pick out the centre and talk about centre passes to them.

• Different methods – verbal, visual etc
• Recognise intrinsic feedback – recognising things for themselves.

Swimming turns – Teaching the swimming to recognise when to turn and how to do it properly by themselves.

Benefits of Feedback in the learning of a skill

Motivational feedback

1. Improvement of performance for the future by learning specifically what they have been doing wrong.

e.g.  Tennis serve – If a serve is accurate but not putting any pressure on the receiver in a match and the server keeps losing their serve, they need to think about placing the ball or putting some sort of spin on.

2. Giving the performer reinforcements, with positive feedback this would motivate the person to try and do something at a higher level and if you give negative this motivates the person to try again. However sometimes too much negative feedback can upset people and performance levels will drop.

e.g. Netball – If a centre has been coming through the middle for backline passes and it isn’t working, motivation will make them try again until it works.

3. Motivational feedback can also be goal setting.

Instructional feedback

Provides information about…

1. The particular behaviour that should be performed.
2. The level of skilfulness that should be achieved.
3. The performer’s current level of competence in the desired skill.

Feedback – Error Detection

Feedback can be used to detect and correct errors:

ACTION                                                CORRECTION                

e.g. shooting                                        extend arms high, bend knees,

a ball (in netball)                                        flick wrists.

                

                        COMPARISON OF FEEDBACK

                                WITH MODEL

MODEL                                                 ERROR DETECTION

getting a goal                                         didn’t go near the hoop

 (too low)

Feedback needs to be used differently depending on the skill and type of feedback. There are also a lot of things to consider:

• Learner’s stage and capacity of learning to process information.
• Individual learner’s preferences.
• Kind of feedback the learner responds to best.
• Kind of sporting activity.
• Time is needed to absorb intrinsic feedback.
• Supplementary feedback would delay further practice or disrupt the learner in their attempt to concentrate on the learning task.

Receiving both extrinsic and intrinsic can confuse the person and the skill very hard to learn as they may think they are doing it wrong when it’s right. Some sports may have more need to use intrinsic and therefore the person will need recognise how to alter their skills using their senses, a person also needs time to process intrinsically.

The Cognitive phase is where a beginner would be placed, it is Extrinsic as beginners haven’t received enough feedback yet to feel internally what they are doing incorrectly, and they need feedback from someone else. At the other end is the Autonomous Phase, where the Elite would be placed, it is Intrinsic as the elite are able to sense what they do wrong.

In sport a performer requires a selection of perceptual skills. The information – processing model known also as the DCR (Detect information, compare it with previous experiences and then React) shows the relationship between a stimulus and the initiated action is S-R (stimulus – response) bond. It is strengthened with positive feedback, this will help skill learning because one will be able to detect problems easier. It is weakened with negative this hinders the learning as detection of problems won’t be recognised and the skill won’t be learnt correctly.

SIMPLE MODEL

The process of decision making:

Situation: Long Rallies in a tennis match, person gives you lots of short balls.

                                                         

Information processing models can only ever be modelled e.g. a psychologist’s idea about what may happen. There is no way of actually measuring mental processes; it is not like measuring physiological processes therefore people assume what is happening in the brain from observations.

Without feedback, skills couldn’t develop and no one would learn what they were doing wrong and right. However feedback is hard to give and that’s why so many people have not achieved the high level of skill that they should be at. Feedback is essential though whether from within or from someone else, as we need to learn from our mistakes and get praised and encouraged from what we do right.