Motor Learning Research Paper

Motor learning can be related to many different fields of Kinesiology, but specifically, motor learning has a great impact in the field of Physical Therapy. In the field of Physical Therapy, patients that come in to receive treatment usually suffer from an injury, physical disability, or disease that has caused them to have a difficult time performing certain motor skills that are necessary for daily life living or for a certain activity. Motor Learning mostly deals with the relearning of motor skills or enhancing the performance of a motor skill because of an injury or disease that has occurred (Magill & Anderson, 3). One example is that a patient who has suffered from a torn ACL in their left knee will have to relearn how to walk again after
With a patient that recently had knee surgery, I will need to find ways to have the elders practice walking on a treadmill and slowly pave their way to a jogging speed on the treadmill. After the physical therapy session, hopefully, they will be able to go on with their daily lives and adjust to their environment using open motor skills with intertrial variability. An open motor skill deals with how the environment around the person will determine when the action begins and intertrial variability deals with how the environment conditions will be regulatory when the performance of a skill can change (Magill & Anderson, 13, 17). One specific example of this is a treadmill can be used to show how the person is doing and at different trials, one can see if the performance of the skill changes through intertrial variability when the patient begins with walking and then moves to jogging. It is also an open skill in this situation because the treadmill determines when the person starts moving and also when they need to speed up, slow down or come to a stop. Giving the patient an opportunity to practice with an open skill will definitely help the patient out when they get back into the environment, which will then be determined when they begin to walk and also at what
Relearning motor skills are vital for them and it is defined as a task or skill that is to be achieved when a person is in control of their body parts (Magill & Anderson, 3). For me, I want to help them improve their motor skill of being able to stand up by themselves; from sitting in a chair or a wheelchair using different set of exercises specific for their needs. A few performance outcomes I could use to access their performance would be to measure the time it takes for them to complete the task, the amount of error they made, time on and off balance, and the repetitions or trials it took for them before they were able to finish the task and do it efficiently well. The important aspect of this exercise in order to analyze and pay attention carefully to is the patient’s reaction time and movement time. A person’s reaction time deals with how fast they respond to the signal that I give them and movement time is how long the person takes from the beginning of the movement until the time they complete it (Magill & Anderson, 29). Reaction times for people can vary and according to a research article that was done on reaction time, depending on age and education, it shows that people who have a higher degree of education have quicker reaction times even when they are older compared to those that did not achieve a degree of higher education (Tun & Lachman, 11). With