Schmidt's schema theory

Various motor learning approaches, such as Schema Theory, Contextual Interference or Differential Learning, have proposed that varying the task during skill acquisition prompts superior learning. However, past research has mainly compared task variation in an experimental group to no task variation in a control group. Past research has more rarely compared specific intervention groups and/or addressed how varying amounts of task variation may affect skill learning. Our aim in this study was to compare motor learning of golf putting across four groups of novice golfers randomly assigned to these conditions: (a) a contextual interference group who putted at varied putting distances and had varied repetitive weekly schedule patterns, (b) a differential learning group who putted at multiple putting distances, putting amplitudes, and putting movements and had no repetitions, (c) an identical differential learning as in (b) except that participants also varied the putter, and (d) a control group who experienced no practice variations...

Fatigue in persons with multiple sclerosis (PwMS) is severely disabling. However, the underlying mechanisms remain incompletely understood. Recent research suggests a link to early childhood adversities and psychological trait variables. In line with these studies, this paper took a psychodynamic perspective on MS-fatigue. It was hypothesized that fatigue could represent a manifestation of maladaptive coping with intense emotions. The schema therapeutic mode model served as a theoretical and empirically validated framework, linking psychodynamic theory and empirical research methods...

According to Schmidt's schema theory skill acquisition is based on schema formation where multiple learning incidents with varying task features are abstracted to a unifying pattern, the schema. Practice can be scheduled block-wise, with low contextual interference (CI) or randomly, with high CI. The greater effort during high CI training usually results in reduced training success but enhanced retention and transfer performance. In contrast to well-established CI effects for simple tasks, findings for complex tasks are heterogeneous, supposedly due to the detrimental accumulation of task demands...

Two experiments were conducted to test predictions, arising from Schmidt's (1975) schema theory of motor learning, related to the effect of variability of initial practice upon subsequent transfer to another task. Rapid linear timing movements were employed to operationally separate the recall and recognition schemata. Experiment 1 showed that training at two different movement times, when given in an appropriate order, facilitated the recall and recognition of a subsequent transfer movement-time task, but only when the criterion movement time was sufficiently outside the range of initial practice...

The variability-of-practice hypothesis, a major prediction of Schmidt's (1975) motor schema theory, was tested in an attempt to investigate motor-schema formation. In addition, schema retention was observed after a 2-week retention interval. The task involved preschool children in tossing a bean bag for appropriate distance. Four treatment groups received 100 practice trials equally divided over five days. Variation was provided by varying the weights of the bean bags. The testing situations involved tossing a criterion weighted bean bag as well as a novel weighted bean bag which none of the groups had experienced previously...

The Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC) invited a representative of the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) to its fifth workshop to present the Ecological Metadata Language (EML) metadata standard and its relationship to the Minimum Information about a Genome/Metagenome Sequence (MIGS/MIMS) and its implementation, the Genomic Contextual Data Markup Language (GCDML). The LTER is one of the top National Science Foundation (NSF) programs in biology since 1980, representing diverse ecosystems and creating long-term, interdisciplinary research, synthesis of information, and theory...

The authors critically review a number of the constructs and associated predictions proposed in schema theory (R. A. Schmidt, 1975). The authors propose that new control and learning theories should include a reformulated (a) notion of a generalized motor program that is not based on motor program but still accounts for the strong tendency for responses to maintain their relative characteristics; (b) mechanism or processes whereby an abstract movement structure based on proportional principles (e.g., relative timing, relative force) is developed through practice; and (c) explanation for parameter learning that accounts for the benefits of parameter variability but also considers how variability is scheduled...

The theory of early maladaptive schemas was initiated by Young, who postulated that each pathology is supported by one or several schemas. Adults with anxiety disorders more activate schemas that controls. This hyper activate schemas would go back the childhood. In this study, we measure some cognitive schema's activation, with the Schmidt and al. Questionnaire: this schema's questionnaire measures the dysfunctional schemas in actual way. Our purpose was to compare early maladaptive schema's activation of adults with anxiety disorders and adults healthy...

The present study investigated the generalizability of Schmidt's (1975) schema theory to an open-skill (Poulton, 1957) situation. Subjects attempted to time a preferred-hand button press so that it was coincident with the lighting of the last of a series of run way lights whose apparent velocity was 4023 mm/sec. Prior to five trials of performance on the criterion task, subjects received 40 trials in which they either (a) watched (low response requirements) or (b) responded with the nonpreferred hand (high response requirements) to a stimulus moving at (a) a constant (2235, 3129, 4917, or 5812 mm/sec) velocity (low stimulus variability) or (b) different velocities (high stimulus variability) from trial to trial...

An experiment is presented which tested the variability of practice hypothesis of Schmidt's (1975) schema theory. Children served as subjects and a complex motor task was used. The results supported the variability of practice hypothesis in that the group that had more variable practice did perform better on the average on a novel variation of the task than did the group with less variable practice. There was no support for the suggestion that variability of practice would increase the rate of improvement on the novel variation...

Conceptual and methodological problems related to Schmidt' (1975) motor schema theory are discussed. In particular, the motor schema is interpreted as representing the dynamics of the system being controlled, which may or may not be associated with a referent movement pattern. Furthermore, it is suggested that prior familiarity with a control system's dynamics is a critical but uncontrolled factor in tests of the theory, and largely accounts for their equivocal findings. These ideas are examined by two experiments in which subjects had to bimanually control the movement of a computer-displayed cursor along a track on a CRT screen...

Since the publication of Schmidt's (1975) schema theory of motor learning, numerous studies have assessed the variability of practice hypothesis. Of these, only research using children as subjects has provided consistent results. Findings from adult studies have been equivocal. Two experiments were conducted to assess the possibility that the schedule of variable practice during acquisition may be a clue to this equivocality, since only experiments (using adults as subjects) that have provide random variability of practice conditions have consistently supported the tenets of schema theory...

The main purpose of the study was to examine whether the effects of variability in practice within a class of movements, that is, enhanced retention and transfer performance relative to constant practice, are due to the formation of motor schemata (Schmidt, 1975) or to contextual interference effects, as suggested by Lee, Magill, and Weeks (1985). Forty-eight subjects were tested on a sequential timing task. One group of subjects (Schema) received variable practice within one movement class, practicing the same phasing pattern with different absolute durations...

Given the need for a memory representation of well-learned motor skills, a common assumption in motor behavior is that this knowledge is stored in a central, abstracted form. Active production of motor skills has not been used in experimental designs that have provided empirical support for this view of representation, however. Much of the faith in centralized, abstracted forms of memory representation for motor skills is due to the popularity of Schmidt's schema theory, which has adapted the prototype abstraction model from category learning research to the representation of motor skills...

Currently, a popular model for the central representation of motor skills is embodied in Schmidt's schema theory of discrete motor skill learning (Schmidt, 1975). Two experiments are reported here that contrast predictions from a schema abstraction model that is the basis for schema theory with those from an exemplar-based model of motor skill memory representation. In both experiments, subjects performed 300 trials per day of three variations of a three-segment timing task over 4 days of acquisition. The subjects then either immediately transferred to four novel variations of the same task (Experiment 1) that varied in degree of similarity to the exemplars experienced during acquisition; or performed two novel and two previously produced exemplars, following 24-h and 1-week retention intervals (Experiment 2)...

A brief commentary is provided on the theoretical assumptions, scholarly impact and continuing influence of the schema theory of motor learning (Schmidt, 1975). The traditional contrasts of schema theory to the coordinative structure or dynamical systems framework are reemphasized, and limitations of the variability of practice experiments noted. A central problem for theories of motor learning is change over time, the basis on which learning is typically defined. Most theories including schema have, however, undervalued the importance of the time-dependent nature of change in deference to the almost exclusive study of the amount of some averaged change in behavioral outcome...

This paper is based on a symposium celebrating the 26th anniversary of the publication of "A Schema Theory of Discrete Motor Skill Learning" (Schmidt, 1975) held at the annual conference of the North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity in June 2001. We provide a brief historical context for schema theory and a review of the development of the mechanistic approach to motor learning in general. We explore recent findings in mental practice, observational learning, augmented feedback presentation, and the variability of practice that are inconsistent with schema theory and provide a rationale for the importance of cognitive activity in motor learning...

The schema theory for discrete motor skill learning (Schmidt, 1975), originally published in 1975, has generated considerable interest and received strong challenges over its lifetime. In this paper, I focus on the findings generated since 1975 that bear on the theory and highlight those that produce difficulties for it and will be motivators for differing theoretical viewpoints in the future. At the same time, I examine other lines of evidence that seem to bolster the original lines of thinking. Finally, I provide some suggestions for a much needed new generation of motor learning theory, pointing out particular features from the schema theory that could be included and suggesting gaps and omissions that will need additional data and theorizing in future attempts...

Training issues raised by the recent introduction of laparoscopic surgical techniques led to this analysis of motor-skill learning principles as they apply specifically to the learning of technical surgical skills. The most accepted theories of motor-skill learning are presented, not as opposing views, but as complementary constructs. The behaviourist school of thought's main contribution is the executive routine or knowledge of the steps of a procedure. Schmidt's schema theory and MacKay's node theory suggest that perceptual information may play an important role in the quality of the performance...

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