Acquisition of Skill
The acquisition of skill requires practice. Merely repeating a task alone, however, does not ensure the acquisition of a skill. Skill acquisition is achieved when an observed behaviour has changed due to experience or practice. This is known as learning and is not directly observable. The information processing model, which incorporates this idea of experience, proposes that skills develop from the interaction of four components central to information processing. These components include: processing speed, the rate at which information is processed in our processing system; breadth of declarative knowledge, the size of an individual's factual information store; breadth of procedural skill, the ability to perform the actual skill; and processing capacity, synonymous with working memory. The processing capacity is of importance to procedural memory because through the process of proceduralization an individual stores procedural memory. This improves skill usage by linking environmental cues with appropriate responses.
One model for understanding skill acquisition was proposed by Fitts (1954) and his colleagues. This model proposed the idea that learning was possible through the completion of various stages. The stages involved include:
- Cognitive phase
- Associative phase
- Autonomous phase (also called the procedural phase)
Read more about this topic: Procedural Memory
Famous quotes containing the words acquisition of, acquisition and/or skill:
“Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.”
—Socrates (469–399 B.C.)
“Whatever may be our just grievances in the southern states, it is fitting that we acknowledge that, considering their poverty and past relationship to the Negro race, they have done remarkably well for the cause of education among us. That the whole South should commit itself to the principle that the colored people have a right to be educated is an immense acquisition to the cause of popular education.”
—Fannie Barrier Williams (1855–1944)
“We teach boys to be such men as we are. We do not teach them to aspire to be all they can. We do not give them a training as if we believed in their noble nature. We scarce educate their bodies. We do not train the eye and the hand. We exercise their understandings to the apprehension and comparison of some facts, to a skill in numbers, in words; we aim to make accountants, attorneys, engineers; but not to make able, earnest, great- hearted men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)