Essay on Learning: Notes on the Psychomotor Domain of Learning

This domain pertains to the manipulative or psychomotor skills which can be developed under the supervision or guidance of an expert or skilled person.

For example, the skill of driving a car can be acquired effectively under the direct supervision of a skilled instructor. Learning psychomotor skills have three characteristics. They are:

1. Responsive chains:

Learning of skills involves a chain of motor responses one muscular movement leads to another muscular movement.

2. Coordination:

The coordination of perception and motor acts is essential in skill learning. For example, a person who learns the skill of driving a car has to coordinate movements of various parts of his body.

3. Response patterns:

Skill learning involves organization of stimulus and response patterns. For example, a child with mastery on riding a bicycle commits minimum errors while riding a bicycle. The skill becomes a habit. Dave (1969) attempted to classify learning situations in the psychomotor domain into five categories.

They are: initiation, manipulation, precision, articulation, and naturalization (mechanization and internalization).

The first three categories are quite clear. Here articulation emphasizes the coordination of a series of acts which are performed appropriately in terms of time, speed and ease. Naturalization refers to the highest level of proficiency or skill whereby an act becomes a routine to be performed with natural ease by a person.

I. Gross body movements:

This class of skills includes movements of limbs in isolation or in coordination with other parts of the body.

II. Finally coordinated movements:

This class of skills includes coordinated movements of the various parts of the body, such as hand-finger, hand-eye, hand-ear, hand-eye-foot, hand-eye-foot-ear combinations, etc.

III. Non-verbal communication behaviors:

This class of skills includes facial expressions, gestures, body movements, etc., to convey messages.

IV. Speech behaviors:

This class of skills includes sound production, sound- gesture coordination, etc.

Harrow (1972) operationally defined ‘psychomotor’ and developed a classification which also deals with sub-categories of psychomotor behaviour and along with concrete examples. This classification is more useful to teachers of physical education.

Thus the psychomotor domain covers any observable movement of one’s body that belongs to the domain of learning. Learning of skills, at times, is a component of cognitive and effective learning too.

As compared to the affective domain, learning in the psychomotor domain can be assessed with much more precision.

There are five stages of psychomotor learning: perception set, guided response, mechanisms and complex overt response.

I. Perception is the process of becoming aware of objects, qualities or relations by way of sense of organs.

II. Set is a preparatory adjustment of readiness for a particular kind of action.

III. Guided response is the early step in the development of skills. It is the overt behavioural act of a learner under the guidance of a teacher. Readiness is a prerequisite for this kind of response.

IV. Mechanism means that learned response has become habitual. At this level, the learner has achieved a certain confidence and the degree of skill to mean that learned response has become habitual.

At this level, the learner has achieved a certain confidence and the degree of skill to perform an act which is part of his repertoire of possible responses to stimuli.

Complex overt response will show that the learner can perform a complex motor act, as he has attained a higher skill.