Interlimb Generalization of Learned Bayesian Visuomotor Prior Occurs in Extrinsic Coordinates

Hewitson, Christopher L.; Sowman, Paul F.; Kaplan, David

doi:10.1523/eneuro.0183-18.2018

Cited by 10 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…The two different task contexts we investigated in this work are distinct to previous studies, as we did not test generalization from one effector to another, such as performing a task with the right hand and switching to the left (Hewitson et al, 2018;Kumar et al, 2020), or switching from a motor to a perceptual task (Chambers et al, 2019). Instead, our two contexts represent two distinct cue-action mappings, though performed with the same motor system (oculomotor).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, previous findings regarding the generalization of statistical priors have been mixed. Some studies have shown that statistical learning of priors is very narrow-band and context/modality-specific in perceptual (Frost et al, 2015) and sensorimotor domains (Hewitson et al, 2018;Yin et al, 2019), thus preventing learned information to transfer to different contexts/modalities. Other studies, on the other hand, provided evidence for generalization (Sato and Kording, 2014;Kiryakova et al, 2020), although generalization, in some instances, seemed to occur differently for different parameters of a statistical distribution; e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Previous Motor Actions Outweigh Sensory Information in Sensorimotor Statistical Learning

Feulner

Postin

Schwiedrzik

et al. 2021

eNeuro

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Humans can use their previous experience in form of statistical priors to improve decisions. It is however unclear how such priors are learned and represented. Importantly, it has remained elusive whether prior learning is independent of the sensorimotor system involved in the learning process or not, as both modality-specific and modality-general learning have been reported in the past. Here, we used a saccadic eye movement task to probe the learning and representation of a spatial prior across a few trials. In this task, learning occurs in an unsupervised manner and through encountering trial-by-trial visual hints drawn from a distribution centered on the target location. Using a model-comparison approach, we found that participants' prior knowledge is largely represented in the form of their previous motor actions, with minimal influence from the previously seen visual hints. By using two different motor contexts for response (looking either at the estimated target location, or exactly opposite to it), we could further compare whether prior experience obtained in one motor context can be transferred to the other. Although learning curves were highly similar, and participants seemed to use the same strategy for both response types, they could not fully transfer their knowledge between contexts, as performance and confidence ratings dropped after a switch of the required response. Together, our results suggest that humans preferably use the internal representations of their previous motor actions, rather than past incoming sensory information, to form statistical sensorimotor priors on the timescale of a few trials.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Previous Motor Actions Outweigh Sensory Information in Sensorimotor Statistical Learning

Feulner

Postin

Schwiedrzik

et al. 2021

eNeuro

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The two different task contexts we investigated in this work are distinct to previous studies, as we did not test generalization from one effector to another, such as performing a task with the right hand and switching to the left [11,21], or switching from a motor to a perceptual task [16]. Instead, our two contexts represent two distinct cue-action mappings, though performed with the same modality (oculomotor system).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, previous findings regarding the generalization of statistical priors have been mixed. Some studies have shown that statistical learning of priors is very narrow-band and context/modality-specific in perceptual [10] and sensorimotor domains [11,12], thus preventing learned information to transfer to different contexts/modalities. Other studies, on the other hand, provided evidence for generalization [4,13], although generalization, in some instances, seemed to occur differently for different parameters of a statistical distribution; e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Previous motor actions outweigh sensory information in sensorimotor learning

Feulner

Postin

Schwiedrzik

et al. 2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Humans can use their previous experience in form of statistical priors to improve decisions. It is however unclear how such priors are learned and represented. Importantly, it has remained elusive whether prior learning is independent of the sensorimotor system involved in the learning process or not, as both modality-specific and modality-general learning have been reported in the past. Here, we used a saccadic eye movement task to probe the learning and representation of a spatial prior across a few trials. In this task, learning occurs in an unsupervised manner and through encountering trial-by-trial visual hints drawn from a distribution centered on the target location. Using a model-comparison approach, we found that participants’ prior knowledge is largely represented in the form of their previous motor actions, with minimal influence from the previously seen visual hints. By using two different motor contexts for response (looking either at the estimated target location, or exactly opposite to it), we could further compare whether prior experience obtained in one motor context can be transferred to the other. Although learning curves were highly similar, and participants seemed to use the same strategy for both response types, they could not transfer their knowledge between contexts, as performance and confidence ratings dropped to naïve levels after a switch of the required response. Together, our results suggest that humans preferably use the internal representations of their previous motor actions, rather than past incoming sensory information, to form statistical sensorimotor priors on the timescale of a few trials.

show abstract

“…These can be varied relative to each other by keeping the body position the same while varying visual stimuli, or by doing the reverse. Some results suggest that, for certain tasks, generalization can occur entirely within a representation of extrinsic space, for instance by showing that learned forward models generalize across limbs (Hewitson, Sowman, & Kaplan, 2018). For other kinds of tasks, generalization is strongest only when novel tasks are similar in both intrinsic and extrinsic space (Carroll, Poh, & de Rugy, 2014).…”

Section: Generalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%