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In order to transfer a task from conscious processing to unconscious procedural processing, a certain degree of intensity is needed. When you are young it is easier to learn things since your level of consciousness is somewhat higher. When you grow older more tasks are done on automatic pilot. Transfer will not take place when operating on automatic pilot. Yet it is perfectly possible to learn new things when you grow older. The only thing is that you have to maintain a higher level of consciousness during learning.
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It will feel a bit out of your lazy comfortzone, but it is not impossible at all. You can compare it with the intensity of consciousness you felt during learning how to drive a car. If you think about it, is amazing how many tasks you learned to perform automaticly in the 40-100 hours or so that you had driving lessons.
Usually when you learn something quite new it is easy to maintain that high level of intense focus. But when the automatic pilot takes over, plateauting sets in. No matter the amount of repetitions.
I very much agree on the importance of using your consciousness when you are acquiring news skills on a later age. This is the reason that I focus so much on explicitly naming patterns (some would say themes or motives) when I solve positions.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how motion patterns fit into all this. I have no idea what the english term for them are, but I mean the procedural muscle memory related to any complex physical movement. like throwing a ball. - studies show those patterns develop roughly before you turn 14 or so, after which it becomes very difficult to acquiring new patterns. which is the reason why a right-handed adult has extreme difficulties learning to throw with his LEFT hand.
ReplyDeleteso, when we work these chess things right into muscle memory, we're actually offloading the task from our conscious mind, much like what you're talking about, but into a different type of unconscious memory.
now, the question is, are visualisation drills neglecting this resource completely, as the processing of problems happens without physically moving any pieces. or, are the drills still having the same effect motion pattern-wise, due to simply THINKING of moving the pieces.
I'd be inclined to think the latter is true, as we do know simply even watching someone throwing a ball excites the very same areas of brain as if we threw the ball ourselves. but it's a question to be asked, and a distinction to be made. there is a difference, and in some type of training it might matter.
loosely related to that, I went on ICC today, and tried mating KQ vs KR. it's been months since I've seriously drilled it the last time, maybe even half a year. so I thought I'd probably fail miserably, since I can't really say I have it in my active conscious mind anymore.
but the results were quite surprising: straight from the start I realized I couldn't really visualize much any of the important squares anymore. I couldn't see which squares were controlled etc, instead it was a sea of square confusion with the pieces floating in the middle. just like when you're really tired and just can't force yourself to see the board properly. -but oddly enough, the moves actually came to me without much trying. I won more than half of the endings, which is quite close to when I'd been drilling the ending daily for a couple of months. and the weird thing is, I mostly couldn't rationalize WHY I made the moves, but they just came out correct. I couldn't see properly, nor give reasoning for moves, yet I kept mating the computer. it was almost like my hand was possessed, and something outside me made the moves. and I think it must've been muscle memory from drilling the mate hundreds (thousands?) of times.
So you are saying that how older you are the more kickstarts of the brain you need to learn something because our old grey matter which we call brain is set on autopilot and the button to switch the brain back to full mode concentration to broken, jamming?
ReplyDeleteChesstiger,
ReplyDeletethe button isn't broken or jammed, the problem is that we don't realize we operate on autopilot. But the more you learn to do things automatic, the more we are inclined to do things automatic. Autopilot is a state that costs less energy, so there is a natural preference for the state.