title: Task difficulty and the time scales of warm-up and motor learning.
abstract: The authors investigated the influence of task difficulty on warm-up decrement and learning across practice sessions. Three groups of participants practiced a star-tracing task over 3 consecutive days with different levels (e.g., easy, medium, hard) of task difficulty. The performance data were modeled with a 2 time scale function that represented the transient, fast time scale process of warm-up decrement superimposed with the persistent, slow time scale process of learning. Movement time decreased as a function of practice with the most difficult condition exhibiting the greatest reduction though still the longest movement time. The 2 time scale model provided a better fit to the data than an exponential or power law function and showed that the 3 difficulty conditions exhibited similar rates of change for the respective slow (i.e., learning) and fast (i.e., warm-up decrement) time scale processes that varied by an order of magnitude. Task difficulty was inversely related to the initial level of warm-up decrement but not the rate of performance recovery early in a practice session. The findings support the postulation that there is a persistent learned component to the initial conditions in subsequent practice sessions but that there is a common time scale of accommodating the transient process of warm-up decrement.
authors.affiliation: Department of Kinesiology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA.
authors.forename: Morina E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Joseph
authors.forename: Adam C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: King
authors.forename: Karl M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Newell
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000502:physiology*; D009048:Motor Skills / Q000502:physiology*; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult