Information Processing
Physical Education: AQA GCSE, topic 6.2.1
Basic Information Processing
Basic information processing involves 4 steps that happen in a continuous loop.
1. Input
- The first stage of information processing is receiving an input.
- Inputs normally come from your 5 senses - sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste.
- This could be seeing a football fly towards you or watching someone try to tackle you in hockey.
- An example of a hearing (auditory) input would be hearing your teammates' shouts.
- Over time as you gain experience, your mind will automatically focus on (and notice) different cues faster. It will learn what to pay the most attention to.
2. Decision making
- You receive the information from the input and then make a decision.
- If you are a goalkeeper, you may decide to dive to stop the football.
- If you see someone trying to tackle you in hockey, you may change direction.
- You will build up memories from your previous experiences and you will choose your actions based on which actions (outputs) were most successful in the past.
- This stage determines whether a person will respond and how they will respond.
3. Output
- In response to the input, your decision will lead you to change your actions. This is the output stage of information processing.
- If you are the goalkeeper, you will dive.
- If you are the hockey player, you may change direction.
- The output will be communicated from your brain to your muscles via the nervous system, causing you to change your behaviour.
4. Feedback
- Feedback tells you whether your actions were successful and achieved the desired result. If you are the goalkeeper, you may have dived successfully to stop the goal. Or you might have dived too far or too late. You will store this experience to improve your dive the next time the football flies towards you.
- Feedback can be split into 2 types:
- Intrinsic feedback comes from yourself - something didn't go the way you wanted it to. You could score a goal, but do it accidentally by miskicking a ball. Noticing this would be intrinsic feedback.
- Extrinsic feedback comes from outside the body - like a goal being scored or not. This can come from a coach or it could be dependent on results or outcomes like scoring a goal.
The information processing loop
Test yourself on Information Processing
Which stage of information processing happens first?
What stage of information processing is the action of Lionel Messi nutmegging the goalkeeper after seeing he is out of position?