Abstract
Feedback about error or reward is regarded essential for aiding learners to acquire a perceptual-motor skill. Yet, when a task has redundancy and the mapping between execution and performance outcome is unknown, simple error feedback does not suffice in guiding the learner toward the optimal solutions. The present study developed and tested a new means of implicitly guiding learners to acquire a perceptual-motor skill, rhythmically bouncing a ball on a racket. Due to its rhythmic nature, this task affords dynamically stable solutions that are robust to small errors and noise, a strategy that is independent from actively correcting error. Based on the task model implemented in a virtual environment, a time-shift manipulation was designed to shift the range of ball–racket contacts that achieved dynamically stable solutions. In two experiments, subjects practiced with this manipulation that guided them to impact the ball with more negative racket accelerations, the indicator for the strategy with dynamic stability. Subjects who practiced under normal conditions took longer time to acquire this strategy, although error measures were identical between the control and experimental groups. Unlike in many other haptic guidance or adaptation studies, the experimental groups not only learned, but also maintained the stable solution after the manipulation was removed. These results are a first demonstration that more subtle ways to guide the learner to better performance are needed especially in tasks with redundancy, where error feedback may not be sufficient.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) R01 HD045639, and National Science Foundation NSF-DMS0928587, awarded to Dagmar Sternad. Fellowships from the Northeastern University Graduate School of Engineering and The Mathworks supported Meghan Huber. This work was also supported by the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences W5J9CQ-12-C-0046. The views, opinions, and/or findings contained in this report are those of the authors and shall not be construed as an official Department of the Army position, policy, or decision, unless so designated by other documents. DS was also supported by a visiting scientist appointment at the Max-Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen, Germany; MH was also supported by a junior scientist appointment at the Max-Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen, Germany.
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No conflicts of interest, financial, or others are declared by the authors.
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All procedures performed in the study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Institutional Review Board of Northeastern University and with the Declaration of Helsinki 1964 and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
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Huber, M.E., Sternad, D. Implicit guidance to stable performance in a rhythmic perceptual-motor skill. Exp Brain Res 233, 1783–1799 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-015-4251-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-015-4251-7