WHY WE NEED TO change: Degeneracy in skill acquisition

C. BUTTON

¹School of Physical Education, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. E-mail: chris.button@otago.ac.nz

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.” Confucius.

Adaptation is a fundamental characteristic of animal behavior as the Chinese philosopher Confucius so eloquently reminds us. This process which supports many aspects of our general behavior and development is currently receiving renewed attention in the motor learning literature. Degeneracy is the capacity of an organism to reconfigure its different structural components to achieve relatively constant levels of desired performance. Humans are degenerate as we are blessed with an abundance of functional degrees of freedom which we use to adapt our actions on a moment to moment basis as required. For example, as we walk up an increasingly steep slope our movement patterns necessarily alter and adapt to the gradient. Information about our body and limb positions in relation to the ground can be detected through a number of different sensory modalities. In this presentation I discuss examples of degeneracy at different levels of human movement behavior (i.e., mechanical and perceptual) and thereby argue that degeneracy is a ubiquitous biological property that plays a central role in many aspects of skill acquisition. Importantly the implications of degeneracy for skill acquisition call into question many traditional principles upon which many current pedagogical practices are based. Finally, I will explore some of the possible theoretical and practical challenges that lie ahead, as our awareness and understanding of degeneracy continues to improve.

    “When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't   adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” Confucius.