muscle memory :: essays research papers

What does it mean to learn a new skill and go from "novice" to "expert"? In the world of dumb equipment, part of that learning means memorizing how to use levers, joysticks, and even pedals in a coordinated way to control the attachment at the give notice of the boom. But how does this memorizing take place? At first, you need to concentrate in order to make your fingers, hands, arms (and feet) move in just the right way, ground on what you see. What youre learning is precision, i.e. how to make the boom attachment perform the task (move a load, grapple a tree, drill a hole, etc.) carefully. (Scientists have discovered that there are a large number of internal brain structures, which work together with the input and output brain structures to form fleeting images in the mind. employ these images, we learn to interpret input signals, process them, and formulate output responses in a deliberate, conscious, way.) But after a while, the "seeing-thinking-doing&qu ot gradually becomes "seeing-doing" because your muscles seem to "know" and " hatch" just what to do. What youre learning now is speed, i.e. how to perform the task carefully and quickly. Thats muscle memory. Scientists call this "kinesthetic memory" or "neuro-muscular facilitation" and they speak of "sensory-motor" learning, since you are combining perceptual experience input, i.e. what you see with your eyes, with motor output, i.e. what you do with your body. Of course, during the "drill-and-practice", your muscles arent really memorizing anything (since all memories are stored in your brain). Instead, what you see with your eyes is interpreted by your brain in the form of nerve signals to your muscles to make your body move. Now by making the same movements in response to the same visual cues over and over again, the associated nerve-muscle connections gradually become to a greater extent effective, i.e. the transmission of the signals becomes more effective, and this is how the "thinking" in the "seeing-thinking-doing" is gradually replaced by "seeing-doing", i.e. by muscle memory. And this is exactly what we observe when people spend time at the controls of our face-to-face Simulators. At first, their body language tells you at a glance that they are concentrating carefully, working hard to watch and learn. But come back sometime by and by and the same people are now relaxed, sitting back, and making the same precise gestures but now much faster In the world of heavy equipment, muscle memory is especially important because its the combination of care and speed that make operators truly competent.