Effects of Concurrent and Delayed Visual Feedback on Motor Memory Consolidation

In many domains, it's important to understand the ways in which humans learn and develop new motor skills effectively and efficiently. For example, in dental operations, the ability to apply a weak force with a required tolerance is a fundamental skill to ensure diagnostic and treatment outcome, but acquiring such a skill is a challenge for novices. In this paper, we focus on motor memory for producing normally applied force by a hand-held probe and we compare the effects of two feedback methods on motor memory consolidation. Fourteen participants were randomly assigned to two groups: a Concurrent Group and a Delayed Group. Participants in the Concurrent Group were trained to apply a target force with concurrent visual feedback, while those in the Delayed Group were trained with delayed visual feedback. The task included two phases: a Training/Testing Phase, and a Retention Phase. The results indicated that participants in the Delayed Group obtained more effective learning outcomes and better retention effects. These findings provide a new perspective to explore the relationship between feedback methods and the cognitive process of motor skill learning, and open a new way to train motor skill using more effective methods than the traditional concurrent feedback approaches.