This review of human motor skills is historical and critical, and starts about 100 years ago. Three historical periods are identified. The main topics are knowledge of results, distribution of practice, transfer of training, retention, and individual differences in motor learning. Basic research is emphasized, but applied research is included also. The article concludes with projections for the future that are based on past research and the present research climate. Why review nearly a century of research on motor skills? A good experiment can result from bouncing off the last one or a small subset of experiments in the literature, so why bother with the panorama? Any good scientific question always seems to have a long story. Perceptive investigators see the key variables and issues of a scientific topic early, and the generations that follow persist in efforts to understand those variables and issues. The first answer to my question, then, is that a sense of history helps an investigator lock onto important themes. Experiments enriched by history could contribute to the science rather than only brightening an inconsequential corner. Second, a sense of history tends to shunt an investigator away from the fads and fashions of his or her field. Fads and fashions are those inconsequential corners that are temporarily magnified out of proportion and that draw the energy of investigators who either have not seen the worth of persisting themes or who allow themselves to be turned from them. Third, the canons of scholarship are based on history because they require that (a) the origins of ideas be known so that one's own ideas are in perspective and, (b) earlier experiments be known so that the knowledge increment in one's own empirical findings is clear. My aim is to organize variables and issues for learning, retention, and transfer that have regularly attracted investigators of human motor skills, and to discuss the experiments that have been done to understand them. The last historical review of human motor skills was by Irion (1966). My review differs from Irion's in that I cover more material, have a different perspective, and update developments in the field. This article begins with a definition of the domain, and then divides the historical coverage into three historical periods: the Early Period, 1880-1940; the Middle Period, 19401970; and the Present Period, 1970 to the present. The periods are delineated by surges in research activity, although I cannot always be strict about the dividing line. The surge associated

https://psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/101/1/41.pdf

Historical review and appraisal of research on the learning, retention, and transfer of human motor skills.

Recurrentconvolutional neural network for object recognition

What are the factors responsible for skilled typing performance, and do they change with the age of the typist? These questions were addressed in two studies by examining time and accuracy of keystrokes in a variety of typinglike activities among typists ranging in speed from 17 to 104 net words per minute and ranging in age from 19 to 72 years old. Typing skill was related to the temporal consistency of making the same keystroke, the efficiency of overlapping successive keystrokes, the speed of alternate-hand tapping, and the number of characters of to-be-typed text required to maintain a normal rate of typing. Older typists were slower in tapping rate and in choice reaction time but were not slower in speed of typing, apparently because they were more sensitive to characters farther in advance of the currently typed character than young typists.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Timothy_Salthouse/publication/16959438_Effects_of_age_and_skill_in_typing/links/0c9605374d142b7587000000.pdf

Effects of age and skill in typing.

This article presents a review of the skill retention and skill decay literature that focuses on factors that influence the loss of trained skills or knowledge over extended periods of nonuse. Meta-analytic techniques were applied to a total of 189 independent data points extracted from 53 articles. Results indicate that there is substantial skill loss with nonpractice or nonuse, with the amount of skill loss ranging from an effect size (d) of -0.01 immediately after training to a d of -1.4 after more than 365 days of nonuse. Most of the study's hypotheses for moderators were supported. Physical, natural, and speed-based tasks were less susceptible to skill loss than cognitive, artificial, and accuracy-based tasks. Additionally, certain methodological variables, such as using recognition tests, using similar conditions of retrieval at retention, and using behavioral evaluation criteria, resulted in less skill loss over time. Implications of the results for training and future research are discussed.

Factors That Influence Skill Decay and Retention: A Quantitative Review and Analysis

Conceived as a deficiency in capacity, feeblemindedness isolates the subject by virtue of that deficiency. In seeking a definite cause of feeblemindedness one is denying that it can have any meaning – that is, a history – or that it may correspond to a situation . (Maud Mannoni, 1972, p. 44) The interiority of pains, afterimages and spots before the eyes cannot impugn the overt, public character of cognitive skills, or the external aims of practical moral decisions. It is only when mental activity regains its place within everyday life, therefore that its outer directness becomes finally clear. (Stephen Toulmin, 1985, p. 17) The emergence of institutionalized education is accompanied by a crisis in diffuse education, which goes directly from practice to practice without passing through discourse. Excellence has ceased to exist once people start asking whether it can be taught, i.e., as soon as the objective confrontation of different styles of excellence makes it necessary to say what goes without saying, justify what is taken for granted, make an ought-to-be and an ought-to-do out of what had up to then been regarded as the only way to be and do. (Pierre Bourdieu, 1977, p. 200) Sometimes if you try harder and harder, it just gets worser and worser. (Adam, 1977, third grade) From 1976 to 1978, Michael Cole, Lois Hood, and I gathered a series of videotapes from one classroom of eight- and nine-year-old children in various settings. Our effort at the time was to locate the children “thinking” aloud in the hope that we could identify naturally occurring examples of some mental activities that seemed so well defined in experimental settings.

Understanding practice: The acquisition of a child by a learning disability

A New Visual Illusion of Direction.

An experimental study of the perception of filled and empty time.

The psychology of skill, with special reference to its acquisition in typewriting.

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/7/1/17.pdf

Edgar James Swift

Papers

A New Visual Illusion of Direction.

An experimental study of the perception of filled and empty time.

The psychology of skill, with special reference to its acquisition in typewriting.

Relearning a skillful act. An experimental study in neuro-muscular memory.

The acquisition of skill in type-writing; A contribution to the psychology of learning.