Hi guys,
KM: It seems to me to be a reasonable hypothesis that, in the kind of reorganization of control systems that produces highly skilled and automatic motor actions, the relevant perceptions, in effect, move down in hierarchical levels.
HB :
I’m inclined to beleive that Kent is right as far the »reaction times«, smoothness, precisiion of movings and other skills of Live organisms are in question. But I must admitt that I was never thinking about this problem before in PCT dimensions. I don’t know how could it work in control systems as Kent used that term. But I could agree what he said about highly skilled and automatiozation of movements, which are produced by lower order parts of nervous system in highly skilled players.
So maybe it could not be bad if we divide for a moment »Live organism« and »PCT-organism« and try to understand why there is a difference in explanations. I’m loooking form the point of very skilled sporstman as I was when I was young. It seems that in the process of training (couple hours a day) repetitions lead to highly skilled and automatic motor actions (controlled perceptions), which seems to be moving down the levels of nervous system, which take over control of »simple movements«. It looks like skilled player is not aware of most body movements.
For exmple table tennis : begginer has to think mostly of his body movements, controling mostly balance perceptions, perception of hands movement, perception of the flight of the ball in coordination of hand movement and so on. While the skilled player controlls mostly perception of other player’s movements, effects which ball have, anticipating where opponent will place the ball and so on. Skilled player is practically not aware of coordinated body, legs or hands movement. He seems not to think about the problems begginer has.
So it seems that at first higher order perceptions in the begginig of training are intensities of coordinated actions of body parts and later probably conjtrol proceeds through other levels of control to levels for controlling relations to ball and system concepts like relations to other player’s position and wholw playing situation. Skiled player seems to control for very complex percpetions of spots on the table where he will place the ball, how much acceleration and spin will he »put« in the ball in relation to position of other player. I have a feeling that there is also a lot of anticipations (probably a lot of controlling in and off imagination).
It was just a flash. But I think it’s not so easy to define this problem with PCT means.
Best,
Boris
···
From: csgnet-request@lists.illinois.edu [mailto:csgnet-request@lists.illinois.edu] On Behalf Of Richard Marken
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2014 3:01 AM
To: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: An (extreme?) example of Imagination Mode?
[From Rick Marken (2014.07.29.1800)]
Kent McClelland (2014.10.28.1100)–
KM: It seems to me to be a reasonable hypothesis that, in the kind of reorganization of control systems that produces highly skilled and automatic motor actions, the relevant perceptions, in effect, move down in hierarchical levels.
MT: Don’t you mean “up” in the levels? Each level up coalesces several lower-level perceptions into a unitary perception, doesn’t it?
RM: You beat me to the punch! I was going to make exactly the same point.
KM: Yes, of course, I take your point.
KM: What interests me about this phenomenon, however, is the question of the “reaction time” (again using the terms from Robertson and Glines) necessary for controlling this reorganized higher-order perception. It’s a general rule with a perceptual hierarchy that perception processing occurs more rapidly as you go down in levels, or otherwise hierarchical control would not be stable.
KM: But it appears that these reorganized higher-order perceptions can be controlled very rapidly, or at least that’s what the Robertson and Glines data seems to show if I’m reading it correctly.
RM: This is an excellent point. Higher level control systems – control systems that control complex perceptions, like sequences, are presumed to have a longer “reaction time” (which in a control system involves both transport lag and integration of output over time) than lower level ones – which control simpler perceptions, like intensities and shapes. And there is evidence that this is the case (eg. Marken, R. S., Khatib, Z. and Mansell, W. (2013) Motor Control as the Control of Perception, Perceptual and Motor Skills, 117, 236-247).
RM: But the measures of reaction time in the Robertson/Glines are not pure measures of the speed of control at different levels of perception. As noted in the paper, the reaction times are somewhat constrained by the nature of the task itself. Being able to react correctly and quickly – indeed, eventually anticipating the correct response – is what defined mastery in this task. You master the task by learning to control a sequence which allows you to press the appropriate key even before the associated display element occurs. So when there is perfect mastery of the task, reaction time – which is measured as the time between display item and keypress – is actually negative. Reaction time in this task is, therefore, definitely not a measure of the temporal characteristics of control. Reaction time is actually itself a controlled variable; you have to learn keep reaction time negative – learn to anticipate the next item in the sequence – in order to win the game.
RM: But it is possibly confusing to someone who understands hierarchical control to use reaction time as a measure of learning to control progressively higher level perceptions, expecting reaction time to be lowest when the participant is controlling the highest level variable. Maybe someone could design a version of this study that didn’t use reaction time as the measure performance.I can’t think of anything offhand but maybe some of the clever people out there can.
Best
Rick
–
Richard S. Marken
Author of Doing Research on Purpose
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