Posted: March 5th, 2016

Explain how the terms performance and learning differ, and why we must infer learning from performance situations?

Laboratory 1: Performance Curves
Aim: To demonstrate one way of measuring learning.
It is important that practitioners be able to successfully distinguish between performance and learning when working in the field. Performance refers to the behavioural act of executing a skill at a specific time and in a specific situation. Alternatively, learning refers to changes in the capability of a person to perform a skill. The difficulty with distinguishing between learning and performance is that learning must be inferred from a relatively permanent improvement in performance as a result of practice or experience. That is, learning cannot be directly measured and we must use things like performance to see if someone seems to be learning the skill. When working with an individual we want to make sure that the skills we are teaching are being learnt, and that the performance is not being misrepresented.
One way we can assess learning is to record performance during the period of time a person practices a skill. A common way to do this is to illustrate and analyse performance graphically in the form of a performance curve. For any performance curve, the levels of the performance measure are always on the Y-axis (vertical axis), and the time over which the performance is measured is on the X-axis (horizontal axis).
Method
The task involves throwing tennis balls over their shoulder at a target for 20 trials. Each trial represents throwing the tennis ball 5 times.
Participants are then required to throw the ball using their non-preferred hand over their shoulder at the target. Record the landing position of each throw. A single trial represents 5 throws. Add up the score of each throw to get a trial score.
Each participant should have 20 trials at the target (100 throws in total).

Results
1. Create a performance curve (i.e., line graph) for the throwing task across the trials.
2.Interpret the results of the lab. Has learning occurred? Was improvement in performance indicated? Were there large inter-trial fluctuations? How would you describe the shape of the performance curve?

Discussion Questions
1. Explain how the terms performance and learning differ, and why we must infer learning from performance situations?
2. Explain the differences between the four predominant performance curves found in skill acquisition literature? What kind of performance curves is represented in your results and why?
3. What is a performance plateau? What seems to be the likely reasons a performance plateau occurs in motor skill learning?