[Overlearning of a pursuit tracking task and change in pulse rate and finger skin blood flow (author's transl)]

Eight subjects were given overlearning of a pursuit tracking task twice which they experienced once either half or one year previously. Distributed practice was employed in the present experiments. Finger skin blood flow (SBF) and pulse rate (PR) were measured throughout the experiments. SBF was smaller during trials and during intertrial rests than during rest with eyes closed, but the difference between during trials and during intertrial rests was not significant. It was supposed that the reason for this effect of overlearning was that the increase in motivation resulted in a high level of activation during intertrial rests. The changing pattern of SBF during trials became similar to that in adding task of the previous study (1977) because of learning or habituation. In the second half of the trials, however, SBF during trials gradually became smaller.