Chapter 16 Three Legacies of Bryan and Harter: Automaticity, Variability and Change in Skilled Performance

Publisher This chapter discusses three legacies of bryan and harter: automaticity, variability, and change in skilled performance. The type of variability referred to inconsistencies in performance outcomes. However, the underlying reasons for variability in performance outcomes can be quite different, and these have been the focus of many theoretical discussions. The nature of change in learning to receive telegraphic code is probably the most contentious issue to emerge from Bryan and Harter's work. Each of the subjects examined while learning the language showed periods of time where no improvement in receiving is noted. These plateaus are interpreted as evidence for stages of qualitative change in the progress of learning. But, the existence of plateaus in performance curves and what they suggest about the learning process are complex issues. The concept of automaticity is one of the most important in this theory and has remained a consistent theme in motor learning theory. The development of automatic processes played a different role in the closed-loop theory of learning. Motor expertise, as characterized by automaticity, can be examined in terms of two distinct, but related lines of reasoning. Bryan and Harter's investigations give recognition and legitimacy to the study of the perceptual and motor processes of skilled behaviour and to the acquisition of these processes.