Using a chopping task to compare expert and competent motor memory

Here, we consider the memory of motor experts using a real-world task-chefs chopping vegetables. We compare expert chefs to competent home cooks, defined as skill enthusiasts or very good performers whose performance experience is narrower than experts. We considered the possibility that competent home cooks' memory for knife skills is organized differently than chefs', and we predicted that their performance will be more vulnerable to interference than experts' in the face of challenges. We used a novel vegetable-chopping task to test the hypothesis that experts are less vulnerable to motor interference than competents. Trained chefs and competent home cooks performed a chopping task in which they were asked to chop a sweet potato into 5-mm wide slices, matching the beat of a metronome (120 beats/min). Following an initial block of trials, each participant was exposed to an altered frequency interference condition and then performed trials of the original task again. Interference was inferred if the second performance of the original task was changed compared with initial performance. Competents' timing and spatial variability were significantly affected by the interference task, but experts' performance was stable. These results support the idea that the vulnerability of motor memory to interference changes with experience, and that in addition to better performance, experts' motor memories are stored and recalled differently than competents'.NEW & NOTEWORTHY From the lab, a comparison of expert chefs to competent home cooks on a defined chopping task shows that vulnerability of motor memory to interference changes with expertise.