From: terry@nambe.santafe.edu (Terry Jones)
Subject: Re: learning left and right
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 92 00:56:37 GMT
Organization: Santa Fe Institute
Distribution: rec

>>>>> On Mon, 23 Nov 1992 10:18:16 EST, <NAYLORD@QUCDN.QueensU.CA> said:

 David>  Terry, you have discovered a well accepted principle of
 David>  motor learning. It's called Transfer of Learning. Simply put
 David>  it means that a motor skill is transferred from limb to limb
 David>  even though only one limb has been actively involved in practise.
 David>  Academics have found that there is even some transfer from to
 David>  different limbs eg. you can write with your foot better because
 David>  you already have the skill with one hand. There are tons of
 David>  experiments in this area, and Transfer of Learning is a well
 David>  established and accepted principle of motor learning. I
 David>  discussed it briefly in a JW article a while back, but your
 David>  examples are much better than mine.

I did read the article when it appeared. I'm not questioning the
existence of transfer of learning. The question is, if you proceed by
learning both at once will you get to the point where both can do it
proficiently faster or slower than if you learn it with the good and
then try to transfer it to the bad? The question is one of speed
rather than whether there is a transfer.

 Me> of course nothing can ever be proved about which method is better,
 Me> (faster, results in better technique) or for what tricks or for who.

 David> On the contrary, there is lots of evidence. I can point you
 David> to some scientific reports on transfer of learning if
 David> you are interested or sceptical.

I am sure there is a large amount of evidence for transfer of
learning, but that is not in question.

The trouble with trying to *prove* (as opposed to accumulate evidence)
an answer to the speed question is that one can only learn something
once - you can't learn it one way and then see if learning it the
other way is faster.  This sort of experiment can never have a truly
reliable control.

This doesn't mean that what others report isn't interesting or that
the accumulated evidence shouldn't be taken as the closest thing to a
proof there could be, and acted upon. What I was saying is that
although you can't formally prove anything, the body of evidence is
probably a pretty good indicator of how to learn quickly. Of course
one could counter that it just boils down to the particular individual
and the particular trick (not to mention a million other variables).
That may well be, but I am interested in the generalizations about
learning speed vs learning method that can be drawn from our
collective experience. Something like that.

Perhaps you might phrase it as: To what extent should one rely on
transfer of learning to speed the learning of both hands? The
conclusion that might arise is that one should rely more heavily on it
(as opposed to learning both hands simultaneously from scratch) when
it is known beforehand that the trick has some quite distinctive feel
or rhythm etc that one needs to "get" before it can be done. Perhaps
this could be phrased as the almost tautological: Rely on transfer of
learning more than learning both from scratch when there are manifest
things that can be transferred. Sounds a bit boring, but, assuming the
previous to be right, what kinds of tricks have significantly more
that can be transferred in this way? I feel it's the ones that have
some particular aspects about them that one can conciously recognize.
If this is so, it would be nice to have an idea of how best others
have found learning a particular trick. For instance, that a lot of
people find learning to ride a uni one footed with either foot is best
done by transfer of learning.

Enough...

Terry.