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      Verbal Instructions and Motor Learning: How Analogy and Explicit Instructions Influence the Development of Mental Representations and Tennis Serve Performance

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          Abstract

          To better understand the benefits of using analogy and explicit instructions, the underlying cognitive mechanism remains to be explored. The concept of chunking provides a promising approach to the cognitive mechanism of instructions and can be approximated by analyzing athletes’ mental representations. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of analogy and explicit instructions on performance and the cognitive representations of the tennis serve in intermediate participants over the course of a 5-week training period. Junior tennis players ( N = 44; M = 11.5 years) were tested on their tennis serve and, based on their initial performance and their individual error patterns, assigned to one of three groups: an analogy group ( N = 15), an explicit group ( N = 15), or a control group ( N = 14). Their performance and their mental representation structures were assessed prior to and after the 5-week training period and again after a retention period of 14 days. Independent of group, findings demonstrated higher velocity from pretest to posttest. Participants in both the analogy and the explicit group showed enhanced accuracy over time and more functional mental representation structures. Thus, both analogy instruction and explicit instruction helped to structure mental representations in their long-term memory.

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          Analogy learning: a means to implicit motor learning.

          Two experiments were conducted to examine the hypothesis that learning by analogy will invoke characteristics of an implicit mode of motor learning. In the first experiment, table tennis novices learned to hit forehand topspin implicitly, explicitly or by analogy. The results showed that the analogy and implicit learning groups accumulated equivalently fewer explicit rules than the explicit learning group during the learning phase. When a concurrent secondary task was added, the explicit learning group suffered from a significantly more serious performance impairment than the analogy and implicit learning groups; no significant differences were seen between the latter two groups. Self-perceived performance was correlated to actual performance in the explicit learning group but not in the analogy or the implicit learning groups. In the second experiment, the performance of an explicit learning group was found to be impaired by both a stress intervention and a thought suppression intervention, whereas the performance of an analogy learning group was not. These characteristics of analogy learning parallel those reported in the implicit learning literature, suggesting that analogy learning may be an effective method for teaching skills implicitly in sport.
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            Mental Representation and Mental Practice: Experimental Investigation on the Functional Links between Motor Memory and Motor Imagery

            Recent research on mental representation of complex action has revealed distinct differences in the structure of representational frameworks between experts and novices. More recently, research on the development of mental representation structure has elicited functional changes in novices' representations as a result of practice. However, research investigating if and how mental practice adds to this adaptation process is lacking. In the present study, we examined the influence of mental practice (i.e., motor imagery rehearsal) on both putting performance and the development of one's representation of the golf putt during early skill acquisition. Novice golfers (N = 52) practiced the task of golf putting under one of four different practice conditions: mental, physical, mental-physical combined, and no practice. Participants were tested prior to and after a practice phase, as well as after a three day retention interval. Mental representation structures of the putt were measured, using the structural dimensional analysis of mental representation. This method provides psychometric data on the distances and groupings of basic action concepts in long-term memory. Additionally, putting accuracy and putting consistency were measured using two-dimensional error scores of each putt. Findings revealed significant performance improvements over the course of practice together with functional adaptations in mental representation structure. Interestingly, after three days of practice, the mental representations of participants who incorporated mental practice into their practice regime displayed representation structures that were more similar to a functional structure than did participants who did not incorporate mental practice. The findings of the present study suggest that mental practice promotes the cognitive adaptation process during motor learning, leading to more elaborate representations than physical practice only.
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              Representation of motor skills in human long-term memory.

              This study uses the example of the tennis serve to investigate the nature and role of long-term memory in skilled athletic performance. Information processing linked with complex movements has always been notoriously difficult to investigate. However, a new experimental method revealed that athletic expertise was characterized by well-integrated networks of so-called basic action concepts (BACs) that each corresponded to functionally meaningful submovements. In high-level experts, these representational frameworks were organized in a distinctive hierarchical tree-like structure, were remarkably similar between individuals and were well matched with the functional and biomechanical demands of the task. In comparison, action representations in low-level players and nonplayers were organized less hierarchically, were more variable between persons and were less well matched with functional and biomechanical demands. It is concluded that, in concert with situational goals and constraints, movement representations of this kind in long-term memory might provide the basis for action control in skilled voluntary movements in the form of suitably organized perceptual-cognitive reference structures.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Front Psychol
                Front Psychol
                Front. Psychol.
                Frontiers in Psychology
                Frontiers Media S.A.
                1664-1078
                07 February 2020
                2020
                : 11
                : 2
                Affiliations
                [1] 1Faculty of Psychology and Sports Science, Department of Sports Science, Sports and Education Research Group, Bielefeld University , Bielefeld, Germany
                [2] 2Faculty of Psychology and Sports Science, Department of Sports Science, Neurocognition & Action - Biomechanics Research Group, Bielefeld University , Bielefeld, Germany
                [3] 3Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC), Bielefeld University , Bielefeld, Germany
                Author notes

                Edited by: Maurizio Bertollo, Università degli Studi “G. d’Annunzio” Chieti e Pescara, Italy

                Reviewed by: John Toner, University of Hull, United Kingdom; David Sherwood, University of Colorado Boulder, United States

                *Correspondence: Christopher Meier, christopher.meier@ 123456uni-bielefeld.de

                This article was submitted to Movement Science and Sport Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

                Article
                10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00002
                7019697
                32116881
                c8329cc6-2c23-4757-b2f9-c3f097052eb8
                Copyright © 2020 Meier, Frank, Gröben and Schack.

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

                History
                : 07 November 2019
                : 03 January 2020
                Page count
                Figures: 11, Tables: 4, Equations: 0, References: 51, Pages: 12, Words: 0
                Categories
                Psychology
                Original Research

                Clinical Psychology & Psychiatry
                instruction,mental representation,long-term memory,chunking,junior tennis players,explicit learning,implicit learning

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