Improving spatial updating accuracy in absence of external feedback

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Human Movement Science

Background:

• Spatial updating relies on cognitive processes, often involving external feedback.
• Perceptual learning models suggest performance can improve without external feedback.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess spatial updating improvement with and without external feedback during whole-body rotation.
• To investigate the generalization of spatial updating improvements to different target eccentricities and rotation directions.

Main Methods:

• Participants predicted target crossing during counterclockwise (CCW) whole-body rotation.
• Four conditions: pre-test, practice (with/without external feedback), and transfer (CCW and clockwise (CW)).
• Evaluated performance improvement and generalization across conditions.

Main Results:

• Performance improved with practice in both feedback and no-feedback groups (p=0.004).
• Greater improvement was observed in the external feedback group (p=0.002).
• Improved performance generalized to a different target eccentricity (CCW) for the feedback group, but not to the untrained rotation direction (CW).

Conclusions:

• Spatial updating can improve without external feedback, but less effectively than with it.
• Performance gains are attributed to a combination of calibration processes and supervised vestibular learning.
• External feedback enhances spatial updating, particularly for trained rotation directions and eccentricities.