title: Transfer as a function of exploration and stabilization in original practice.
abstract: The identification of practice conditions that provide flexibility to perform successfully in transfer is a long-standing issue in motor learning but is still not well understood. Here we investigated the hypothesis that a search strategy that encompasses both exploration and stabilization of the perceptual-motor workspace will enhance performance in transfer. Twenty-two participants practiced a virtual projection task (120 trials on each of 3 days) and subsequently performed two transfer conditions (20 trials/condition) with different constraints in the angle to project the object. The findings revealed a quadratic relation between exploration in practice (indexed by autocorrelation and distribution of error) and subsequent performance error in transfer. The integration of exploration and stabilization of the perceptual-motor workspace enhances transfer to tasks with different constraints on the scaling of motor output.
authors.affiliation: Motor Behavior Laboratory, Department of Kinesiology, The University of Georgia, 339 Ramsey Center, Athens, GA 30602, United States. Electronic address: matheus.lacom@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Matheus M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Pacheco
authors.affiliation: Motor Behavior Laboratory, Department of Kinesiology, The University of Georgia, 339 Ramsey Center, Athens, GA 30602, United States.
authors.forename: Karl M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Newell
mesh_terms: D000054:Acceleration; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D003196:Computer Graphics; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception; D009048:Motor Skills; D009949:Orientation; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D014163:Transfer, Psychology; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Exploration; Motor learning; Search-strategies; Transfer