Legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden once said: “The importance of repetition until automaticity cannot be overstated”. Reaching a stage where some skills can be performed “automatically” is thought to be one of the main goals of sports training and one of the defining characteristics of being an expert. But what exactly does it mean for a sports skill to be “automatic” and how exactly is this desired state achieved through training? In this episode, I introduce the topic of skill acquisition be exploring traditional theories of how an athlete progresses from a novice to an expert.

Research confessions: Does research always happen like we say it does in journal articles?

Links to articles discussed:

From attentional control to attentional spillover: a skill-level investigation of attention, movement, and performance outcomes

Expertise, attention, and memory in sensorimotor skill execution: impact of novel task constraints on dual-task performance and episodic memory

Fitts & Posner

More information

http://www.perceptionactionpodcast.libsyn.com/

My Research Gate Page (pdfs of my articles)

My ASU Web page

Podcast Facebook page (videos, pics, etc)

Twitter: @Shakeywaits

Email: robgray@asu.edu

8- How Do We Become an Expert? Intro to Skill Acquisition