Learning — Psychology STD 11 Humanities — Question

A skill is defined as the ability to perform some complex task smoothly and efficiently, e.g. car driving, writing etc.
Skill consists of a chain of perceptual motor responses or as a sequence of S-R associations, e.g.: Movements of legs, feet and toes etc.
According to Fits skill learning develops through three stages.

1. Cognitive Phase: In cognitive phase of skill learning, the learner has to understand and memories the instructions.

• The learner has to understand how the task has to be performed.
• In this phase every outside cue instructional demand and one’s response outcome have to be kept alive in consciousness.

2. Associative Phase:

• Different sensory inputs or stimuli are to be linked with appropriate responses.
• As the practice increases, errors decrease, performance improves and time taken is also reduced.

3. Autonomous Phase: Two important changes take place in performance.

• The Attentional demands of the associative phase decreases.
• Inference created by external factors reduces. Finally, skilled performance attains Automaticity with minimal demands of–conscious effort.