Motor response specificity in perceptual learning and its release by double training

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Perceptual Learning

Background:

• Perceptual learning is typically specific to visual features.
• Recent findings indicate specificity extends to motor response types.
• Previous work showed no transfer between button presses and mouse adjustments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if perceptual learning with mouse adjustments transfers to other motor responses.
• To determine if a double training procedure can overcome motor response specificity.
• To explore the relationship between perceptual learning and action encoding.

Main Methods:

• Participants performed a three-line bisection task using either button presses or mouse adjustments.
• Perceptual learning was assessed by transfer to untrained hands and different response types.
• A double training procedure was implemented to test for overcoming specificity.

Main Results:

• Perceptual learning with mouse adjustments transferred to the untrained hand but only for mouse adjustments.
• No transfer was observed to button press conditions from mouse adjustments.
• Double training enabled transfer from mouse adjustments to button presses.

Conclusions:

• Perceptual learning exhibits specificity to the motor response type.
• This specificity can be overcome through double training procedures.
• Results suggest perceptuo-decisional signals are encoded with actions during learning.