Acquisition of intellectual and perceptual-motor skills.
Recent evidence indicates that intellectual and perceptual-motor skills are acquired in fundamentally similar ways. Transfer specificity, generativity, and the use of abstract rules and reflexlike productions are similar in the two skill domains; brain sites subserving thought processes and perceptual-motor processes are not as distinct as once thought; explicit and implicit knowledge characterize both kinds of skill; learning rates, training effects, and learning stages are remarkably similar for the two skill classes; and imagery, long thought to play a distinctive role in high-level thought, also plays a role in perceptual-motor learning and control. The conclusion that intellectual skills and perceptual-motor skills are psychologically more alike than different accords with the view that all knowledge is performatory.
Rosenbaum
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Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA. dar12@psu.edu
Carlson
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Gilmore
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D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination / Q000502:physiology; D007360:Intelligence; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D009048:Motor Skills / Q000502:physiology*; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology*