Effects of Physical Practice and Imagery Practice on Bilateral Transfer in Learning a Sequential Tapping Task

Abstract

Recent research on bilateral transfer suggests that imagery training can facilitate the transfer of motor skill from a trained limb to that of an untrained limb above and beyond that of physical practice. To further explore this effect, the present study examined the influence of practice duration and task difficulty on the extent to which imagery training and physical training influences bilateral transfer of a sequential key pressing task. In experiment 1, participants trained on the key pressing task using their non-dominant arm under one of three conditions (physical practice, imagery practice, and no practice). In a subsequent bilateral transfer test, participants performed the sequential task using their untrained dominant arm in either an original order or mirror-ordered sequence. In experiment 2, the same procedures were followed as in experiment 1 except that participants trained with their dominant arm and performed the bilateral transfer task with their non-dominant arm. Results indicated that with extended practice beyond what has been employed in previous studies, physical practice is more effective at facilitating bilateral transfer compared to training with imagery. Interestingly, significant bilateral transfer was only observed for transfer from the non-dominant to the dominant arm with no differences observed between performing the task in an original or mirror ordered sequence. Overall, these findings suggest that imagery training may benefit bilateral transfer primarily at the initial stages of learning, but with extended training, physical practice leads to larger influences on transfer.

Interlimb transfer of motor skill learning during walking: No evidence for asymmetric transfer

“…The direction of transfer, however, varies across studies, in that some studies have shown greater transfer after initial practice with the dominant hand [13, 32], while others have shown greater transfer after initial practice with the nondominant hand [15, 17, 33]. The precise reason for this asymmetric transfer is currently not clear, although scientists have linked this observation to the idea of hemispheric specialization for certain movement variables (e.g., kinematic vs. dynamic) [16, 18, 20].…”

Leveraging the effector independent nature of motor imagery when it is paired with physical practice

“…encoding results relative to physical practice 6 . In contrast, a bout of physical practice-based training leads to inferior performance with the untrained relative to the trained effector 4 and greater encoding of effector dependent information 6 . In these studies, overall improvements in performance resulting from motor imagery remained inferior to those driven through physical practice 4,6 .…”

Principios del aprendizaje motor: Una revisión sobre sus aplicaciones en la rehabilitación del accidente cerebrovascular.

“…El entrenamiento bilateral, conocido como transferencia bimanual, es un proceso donde el sistema neuromotor recupera información relevante para el aprendizaje de la extremidad entrenada y la transfiere a la extremidad opuesta no entrenada. 37 Mediante este fenómeno la experiencia obtenida en un miembro entrenado tiene un impacto beneficioso sobre el miembro contralateral no entrenado. 37,38 Este es un enfoque de gran relevancia para la rehabilitación del ACV, ya que el paciente puede analizar las características de habilidad entrenada y utilizar esa experiencia para favorecer la práctica con el lado afectado.…”