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Obstacle avoidance in novel visual environments improved by variable practice training.

Helen S Cohen1, Jacob J Bloomberg, Ajitkumar P Mulavara

  • 1Bobby R. Alford Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA. hcohen@bcm.tmc.edu

Perceptual and Motor Skills
|February 24, 2006
PubMed
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Variable practice training enhances motor skill performance in novel environments. This approach improves adaptation to new sensorimotor challenges, even when practice and testing conditions differ.

Area of Science:

  • Motor learning and sensorimotor adaptation

Background:

  • Motor performance on simple tasks improves with variable practice.
  • The effectiveness of variable practice on complex locomotor skills in novel environments remains less understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if locomotor skill in an obstacle-avoidance task improves via variable practice on other complex tasks.
  • To compare the effects of constant versus variable practice on adapting to novel sensorimotor environments.

Main Methods:

  • Forty healthy adults participated in the study.
  • Participants engaged in gross motor skill practice wearing either sham lenses, constant visual distortion lenses, or variable visual distortion lenses.
  • Posttests assessed obstacle avoidance performance using novel visual distortion lenses.

Related Experiment Videos

Main Results:

  • Variable practice and one constant practice group showed significantly better obstacle avoidance scores compared to the sham lens group.
  • No significant difference was found between the constant and variable practice groups.
  • Performance in novel environments improved after training on similar novel tasks, irrespective of differing practice and test conditions.

Conclusions:

  • Training on similar novel tasks enhances performance in new environments, even with different practice and test conditions.
  • Variable practice increases the likelihood of effective training for adaptive performance in novel sensorimotor settings.
  • Constant practice efficacy is dependent on using the specific lens effective during training.