HPE

WHAT IS THE COGNITIVE STAGE?

The Cognitive stage of learning is when a person is 'figuring out' a skill.

This phase occurs when the athlete is attempting to understand the basic skills of a sport.

What makes me a Cognitive Learner?

• I am a beginner to the Sport
• I am in the process of learning and perfecting the very basic skills of volleyball such as;
• Setting
• Passing
• Digging
• I am not always sure where I went wrong and cannot easily correct errors as a associative or autonomous learner would be able to do.

How Does One Transition Through Stages?

To transition through stages you need to take part in some form of practice. This could include;

• Massed - Where learners practice a skill continuously without any rest breaks or intervals. Practice sessions are usually very long.
• Distributed - Where practice sessions have rest intervals. The rest intervals allow a learner to recover both mentally and physically.
• Fixed - Where learners practice specific skills in many different environments. The practice conditions must be as realistic as possible for this to be successful. Techniques are adapted to suit the environment. This type of practice can also be a mixture of massed or distributive practice to vary intensity.

Massed Practice

Mass practice would assist my progress in volleyball as it I am someone who works better when I practice something until I cannot do it wrong. This sort of practice would allow me to master basic skills.

Part Practice and Whole Practice.

To assist my learning futher I would use part practice and then move into whole practice to allow me to understand each basic step before I strung them together as a whole skill.

How Does Feedback Affect Me?

As a cognitive learner, I am less likely to know where exactly my skills need improvement and do not experience internal feedback as much as an associative or automonous learner would. Therefore constructive critisism (Extrinsic Feedback) is extremely important to assist my progressive improvement in volleyball. This feedback comes in different ways and times such as;

• Knowledge of results
• Knowledge of performance
• Concurrent feedback
• Delayed Feedback

What type of Feedback is good for me?

As a cognitive learner, I believe knowledge of performance would benefit me more than knowledge of results. Cognotive learners tend to need to master each movement before perfecting a skill. If I had kowledge of my performance I would know the exact features I would need to improve on rather than whether I went wrong or right.

As a cognnitive learner I also think the timing of my feedback is important. For my stage I believe that Concurrent feedback would suit me best as I would be able to immediently address the issues and perfect the skills.