Congruent sonification during practice impairs cue-reduced recall in a virtual reality rhythm-game task.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Motor Learning
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Rhythm game learning integrates auditory and visual information.
• Constant sensory cues might enhance initial learning but limit performance upon cue withdrawal.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether congruent sonification during virtual reality (VR) rhythm game practice strengthens trajectory representation or promotes cue dependency.
• To determine the impact of auditory cues on motor skill retention in VR environments.

Main Methods:

• Forty participants learned a VR rhythm game trajectory sequence.
• Participants practiced with visual feedback only (Control) or audiovisual feedback (Sonification group).
• Performance was assessed via accuracy and practice-to-test decrement during cue-reduced silent trials.

Main Results:

• Both groups showed similar practice performance (around 80% hit rate).
• The Control group significantly outperformed the Sonification group in cue-reduced silent tests (81.9% vs. 68.4%).
• Sonification led to greater cue dependency, indicated by a larger practice-to-test decrement.

Conclusions:

• Sound-guided practice in VR rhythm games can increase reliance on auditory cues, impairing performance when cues are absent.
• VR motor training should either match the final execution context or use faded cue schedules for better skill retention.
• Findings support the guidance hypothesis and specificity-of-practice principles in motor skill acquisition.