Is there "feedback" during visual imagery? Evidence from a specificity of practice paradigm.

Abstract

The specificity of practice hypothesis predicts the development of a sensorimotor representation specific to the afferent feedback available during skill acquisition (Proteau, 1992; Proteau, Marteniuk, Girouard, & Dugas, 1987). In the present investigation, we used the specificity of practice hypothesis to test whether skill acquisition through visual imagery would lead to the development of a sensory-specific movement representation similar to one resulting from actual practice. To accomplish this objective, participants practiced walking a 12-m linear path in one of three practice conditions, full-vision (FV), no-vision (NV), or visual imagery (VI), for either 10 or 100 trials. Knowledge of spatial and/or temporal results (KR) was provided to participants following each trial during this phase. Following acquisition, participants completed 10 NV trials without KR. An analysis of root-mean-squared-error (RMSE) indicated NV participants were more accurate than both FV and VI participants in the transfer condition. We believe the equivalence in transfer RMSE between FV and VI suggests that there are similarities between the movement representations attained by FV and VI practice.

How one breaks Fitts’s Law and gets away with it: Moving further and faster involves more efficient online control

“…Further, while the use of imagined movements can be intuitively associated with motor planning processes, it has also been proposed that imagined movements involve the emulation of online control mechanisms (e.g., Grush, 2004). Indeed, studies employing imagined actions can reflect the acquisition of online control mechanisms (Krigolson, Van Gyn, Tremblay, & Heath, 2006). Thus, attributions of the Fitts' Law violation to planning processes have largely ignored the possibility that placeholder manipulations could have affected online control.…”

On the Content of Sensorimotor Representations After Actual and Motor Imagery Practice

“…In manual aiming toward visual targets, it has been proposed that early in practice, participants are able to determine the source(s) of afferent information that are more likely to ensure optimal accuracy, this role being mainly devoted to visual feedback processing (Coull, Tremblay & Elliott, 2001;Ivens & Marteniuk, 1997;Mackrous & Proteau, 2007;Proteau & Carnahan, 2001;. The increased reliance upon visual feedback has also been supported by study of gross motor tasks as walking (Krigolson et al, 2006;Proteau et al, 1998), powerlifting and sequential positioning (Ivens & Marteniuk, 1997). However, others studies challenged the visual dominance in motor control and learning, the detrimental effect of vision withdrawal decreasing with practice (Robin et al, 2004(Robin et al, , 2005Tremblay et al, 2001).…”

“…For example, Proteau and collaborators (1987Proteau and collaborators ( , 1992Proteau and collaborators ( , 2001 observed that during video-aiming, participants who practiced the task with both visual and proprioceptive information (i.e., VP condition) were less accurate in a transfer test, when they had to perform the same task in a proprioceptive only condition (P condition), than participants who practiced it in a proprioceptive (P) condition. Moreover, the withdrawing of visual information on movement execution in transfer resulted either in a large deterioration in motor performance early during learning (i.e., after 20 trials; or in a deterioration that increased with practice (Blandin, Toussaint & Shea, 2008;Ivens & Marteniuk, 1997;Krigolson, Van Gyn, Tremblay & Heath, 2006;Proteau et al, 1987Proteau et al, , 1992Proteau et al, , 1998. Vision can thus be considered as the dominant sensory information for motor learning and control This dominance of visual cues was challenged in other works (Tremblay, Welsh & Elliott, 2001;Robin et al, 2004Robin et al, , 2005.…”

Imagined actions aren't just weak actions: Task variability promotes skill learning in physical practice but not in mental practice.

“…Support for this idea can be found in a study that had participants either physically or mentally practice a special walking task in a specificity-ofpractice paradigm (Krigolson, Van Gyn, Tremblay, & Heath, 2006). In this paradigm, transfer is thought to depend on the similarity of visual or kinesthetic feedback available during acquisition and transfer.…”