Variable feedback timing influences motor learning strategy

Learning a new motor skill requires a delicate balance between exploring new motor control solutions and exploiting known solutions. A commonly observed learning strategy that may reflect the interplay between exploration and exploitation involves holding a joint or a motor parameter constant while varying other degrees of freedom. By examining the relative variability between two deciding parameters of a novel single-joint motor learning task, we quantify usage of this strategy and relate it to motor learning and performance. In addition, we ask how experimentally induced motor variability, in the form of a persistent, variable visual feedback delay, affects the exploration and exploitation trade-off and usage of this strategy. The results showed participants alternated between periods where one motor control parameter was suppressed while the other varied. The transition away from this strategy is linked to motor performance. Furthermore, variable visual feedback delay slowed down this transition, thus hurting motor performance. We suggest that uncertainty from the variable feedback delay interferes with the effectiveness of the exploration of potential control solutions, resulting in a shift to a more systematic strategy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).