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Improvement by imagining actions: Bimanual transfer effects after action imagery practice in a sequential reaction
Stephan F Dahm1, Sandra Sülzenbrück2, Martina Rieger3
1Universität Innsbruck, Department of Psychology, Innsbruck, Austria.
Acta Psychologica
|December 17, 2024
Summary
Action-imagery-practice (AIP) and action-execution-practice (AEP) both develop effector-dependent representations. Visual-spatial representations were stronger after AEP, while AIP utilized both kinesthetic and visual modalities for motor learning.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Motor Learning
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Action-imagery-practice (AIP) involves mentally rehearsing actions to enhance performance.
- Previous research suggests AIP may lead to different neural representations compared to action-execution-practice (AEP).
- The specific types of representations formed through kinesthetic (K-AIP) and visual (V-AIP) action imagery remain underexplored.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the representation types developed through kinesthetic action-imagery-practice (K-AIP) and visual action-imagery-practice (V-AIP).
- To compare these representations with those developed through action-execution-practice (AEP) and control practice (CP).
- To examine the role of effector-dependent versus effector-independent representations in motor learning.
Main Methods:
- A serial reaction time task was employed with a crossed hand transfer paradigm.
- 169 participants were randomly assigned to AEP, K-AIP, V-AIP, or CP groups.
- Practice occurred over ten days with uncrossed hands, followed by tests using both uncrossed and crossed hands across various sequence manipulations.
Main Results:
- Sequence-specific transfer effects with crossed hands provided limited evidence for effector-independent representations in late learning stages for AEP and V-AIP.
- Performance on the same sequence with uncrossed hands revealed stimulus-response location-associated, effector-dependent sequence-specific representations in AEP, K-AIP, and V-AIP, but not CP.
- These visual-spatial, effector-dependent representations were more pronounced following AEP compared to AIP.
Conclusions:
- Action-imagery-practice, regardless of specific modality instructions, appears to integrate both kinesthetic and visual information, promoting motor learning.
- While AEP led to stronger visual-spatial effector-dependent representations, both K-AIP and V-AIP resulted in similar learning outcomes.
- The study highlights the development of effector-dependent representations in motor skill acquisition through various practice methods.
