Motor learning

Motor learning is a change, resulting from practice or a novel experience, in the capability for responding. It often involves improving the smoothness and accuracy of movements and is obviously necessary for complicated movements such as speaking, playing the piano, and climbing trees; but it is also important for calibrating simple movements like reflexes, as parameters of the body and environment change over time. Motor learning research often considers variables that contribute to motor program formation (i.e., underlying skilled motor behaviour), sensitivity of error-detection processes, and strength of movement schemas (see motor program). Motor learning is 'relatively permanent', as the capability to respond appropriately is acquired and retained. As a result, the temporary processes that affect behaviour during practice or experience should not be considered learning, but rather transient performance effects. As such, the main components underlying the behavioural approach to motor learning are structure of practice and feedback given. The former pertains to the manipulation of timing and organization of practice (potentially for different subtasks or variations of the task) for optimal information retention (also see varied practice), while the latter pertains to the influence of feedback on the preparation, anticipation, and guidance of movement. Motor learning is a change, resulting from practice or a novel experience, in the capability for responding. It often involves improving the smoothness and accuracy of movements and is obviously necessary for complicated movements such as speaking, playing the piano, and climbing trees; but it is also important for calibrating simple movements like reflexes, as parameters of the body and environment change over time. Motor learning research often considers variables that contribute to motor program formation (i.e., underlying skilled motor behaviour), sensitivity of error-detection processes, and strength of movement schemas (see motor program). Motor learning is 'relatively permanent', as the capability to respond appropriately is acquired and retained. As a result, the temporary processes that affect behaviour during practice or experience should not be considered learning, but rather transient performance effects. As such, the main components underlying the behavioural approach to motor learning are structure of practice and feedback given. The former pertains to the manipulation of timing and organization of practice (potentially for different subtasks or variations of the task) for optimal information retention (also see varied practice), while the latter pertains to the influence of feedback on the preparation, anticipation, and guidance of movement. Contextual interference was originally defined as 'function interference in learning responsible for memory improvement'. Contextual interference effect is 'the effect on learning of the degree of functional interference found in a practice situation when several tasks must be learned and are practiced together'. Variability of practice (or varied practice) is an important component to contextual interference, as it places task variations within learning. Although varied practice may lead to poor performance throughout the acquisition phase, it is important for the development of the schemata, which is responsible for the assembly and improved retention and transfer of motor learning. Despite the improvements in performance seen across a range of studies, one limitation of the contextual interference effect is the uncertainty with regard to the cause of performance improvements as so many variables are constantly manipulated. In a review of literature, the authors identify that there were few patterns to explain the improvements in experiments that use the contextual interference paradigm. Although there were no patterns in the literature, common areas and limitations that justified interference effects were identified: Feedback is regarded as a critical variable for skill acquisition and is broadly defined as any kind of sensory information related to a response or movement. Intrinsic feedback is response-produced — it occurs normally when a movement is made and the sources may be internal or external to the body. Typical sources of intrinsic feedback include vision, proprioception and audition. Extrinsic feedback is augmented information provided by an external source, in addition to intrinsic feedback. Extrinsic feedback is sometimes categorized as knowledge of performance or knowledge of results. Several studies have manipulated the presentation features of feedback information (e.g., frequency, delay, interpolated activities, and precision) in order to determine the optimal conditions for learning. See Figure 4, Figure 6, and summary Table 1 for a detailed explanation of feedback manipulation and knowledge of results (see below). Knowledge of performance (KP) or kinematic feedback refers to information provided to a performer, indicating the quality or patterning of their movement. It may include information such as displacement, velocity or joint motion. KP tends to be distinct from intrinsic feedback and more useful in real-world tasks. It is a strategy often employed by coaches or rehabilitation practitioners. Knowledge of results (KR) is defined as extrinsic or augmented information provided to a performer after a response, indicating the success of their actions with regard to an environmental goal. KR may be redundant with intrinsic feedback, especially in real-world scenarios. However, in experimental studies, it refers to information provided over and above those sources of feedback that are naturally received when a response is made (i.e., response-produced feedback; Typically, KR is also verbal or verbalizable. The impact of KR on motor learning has been well-studied and some implications are described below. Often, experimenters fail to separate the relatively permanent aspect of change in the capability for responding (i.e. indicative of learning) from transient effects (i.e. indicative of performance). In order to account for this, transfer designs have been created which involve two distinct phases. To visualize the transfer design, imagine a 4x4 grid. The column headings may be titled 'Experiment #1' and 'Experiment #2' and indicate the conditions you wish to compare. The row headings are titled 'Acquisition' and 'Transfer' whereby: