PDFE # 8

PDFE #8 is a reflection on a lab performed in class on Monday, October 25, 2010. The purpose of the lab was to demonstrate to us how a learner moves through both the verbal-cognitive and the motor stages of learning when learning a simple skill. The lab also gave us practice in observing performance characteristics associated with the stages of learning. The different stages are: verbal-cognitive stage, motor stage, and the autonomous stage. During the verbal-cognitive stage the learner is trying to understand the general idea of the skill, identifying a goal, is having to devote a lot of attention to the steps, and is deciding what and what not to do. While observing this a person would see jerky movements, self-talk, and relatively large gains in performance. During the motor stage the person learning is trying to organize more effective movement patterns, is beginning to monitor feedback from performance, and is developing capabilities to better anticipate events/time movements. During this stage a person can observe that movements are quicker, improvements are less dramatic, and performance stabalizes. The final stage is the Autonomous stage, in this stage the learners' movements are automatic, the person can devote time to secondary tasks, and improvements are subtle to undetectable. The person observing can see each of these things as well. My partner during this lab was Caitlin. When she first began to perform the skill she was slow and had to read the directions several times. During the first three trials she only made it to step three and she had trouble understanding directions. During the fourth trial she made it all the way to step five (the final step), but the quality was not adequate. The string slid back through. The previous steps were all in the verbal-cognitive stage. Around trial six, she began looking less at the directions, and became much faster. Indicating that she was had entered the motor stage. Around trials ten, eleven, and twelve she began to enter the autonomous stage, where she carried on conversations with me while producing an excellent knot. She no longer had to think about what she was doing. The information we were given in the textbook matched perfectly to what we observed during this lab. Many of the signs given for each stage were visible during Caitlin's learning process. The biggest challenges we faced when performing the lab was understanding the directions. It took Caitlin the longest time at the beginning to comprehend what the directions were asking in each step. When we tried to tie the knot upside down it was not longer in the autonomous stage, we went back to the verbal-cognitive stage, but it was a faster process that before once we figured out how to tie the knot. This lab increased our knowledge of the stages of learning and was overall very fun to perform!