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Visuomotor adaptation and observational practice

University of British Columbia

It has been suggested that observational practice engages neural mechanisms for movement planning and execution similar to those engaged in physical practice. In three experiments we investigated observational practice during adaptation to a novel visuomotor environment. Participants were tested in the normal visuomotor environment before and after observation, and in the novel environment after observation. In the latter, learning would be seen by immediate performance benefits from watching. In the former, negative after-effects in the normal environment would suggest an updating of internal models based on the visuomotor discordance, arguably a more robust index of learning. In Experiment 1, observers showed benefits in the novel environment, but no after-effects. Because after-effects are believed to be a result of perceived discrepancies between sensory input and predicted sensory consequences, we hypothesised that observational practice might not engage covert simulation involving motor processes to the same degree as initially implied. To more thoroughly test this idea, in Experiment 2 we encouraged more active observation (or simulation) through conditions requiring imagery and error estimation. Despite these manipulations, only actors showed after-effects. In Experiment 3, a group of observers was also passively moved during observation, to determine whether the absence of after-effects was more linked to afferent feedback instead. However, this condition still failed to yield after-effects. A second observer group actively imitated the movements of the actor during observation but this group’s performance was not different from that of passive observers. Because the primary difference between actors and active-observers was the lack of self-generated visual reafference, these results strongly suggest that to update internal models, experiencing visual reafference of one’s own movement is critical. We speculate that learning might have been realized in observers via a more cognitive-strategic route, as compared to actors, based on data across the three experiments showing that observers acquired more accurate explicit knowledge about the direction and size of the visuomotor perturbation, compared to actors. In conclusion, it appears that doing and seeing engage different processes which in the case of visuomotor adaptation, result in different types of learning and learning outcomes for observers and actors.

Text

2010-03-29

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/22825

Human Kinetics

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/