Perceptual information supports transfer of learning in coordinated rhythmic movement

Abstract

In this paper, we trained people to produce 90° mean relative phase using task-appropriate feedback and investigated whether and how that learning transfers to other coordinations. Past work has failed to find transfer of learning to other relative phases, only to symmetry partners (identical coordinations with reversed lead-lag relationships) and to other effector combinations. However, that research has all trained people using transformed visual feedback (visual metronomes, Lissajous feedback) which removes the relative motion information typically used to produce various coordinations (relative direction, relative position; Wilson and Bingham, in Percept Psychophys 70 (3):465-476, 2008). Coordination feedback (Wilson et al., in J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 36(6):1508, 2010) preserves that information and we have recently shown that relative position supports transfer of learning between unimanual and bimanual performance of 90° (Snapp-Childs et al., in Exp Brain Res 233 (7), [2225][2226][2227][2228][2229][2230][2231][2232][2233][2234][2235][2236][2237][2238] 2015). Here, we ask whether that information can support the production of other relative phases. We found large, asymmetric transfer of learning bimanual 90° to bimanual 60° and 120°, supported by perceptual learning of relative position information at 90°. For learning to transfer, the two tasks must overlap in some critical way; this is additional evidence that this overlap must be informational. We discuss the results in the context of an ecological, task dynamical approach to understanding the nature of perception-action tasks.Publisher's Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

The Ecological Task Dynamics of Learning and Transfer in Coordinated Rhythmic Movement

“…Most recently, and directly preceding the current study, Leach et al (2021) Overall, the results of these two transfer studies support the dynamical analysis of what a perception-action task is, from the first-person perspective of the organism. Learning alters the overall task dynamic of the system producing the behaviour, specifically in this case by altering the informational coupling between the limbs.…”

“…Transfer occurred at 30 • and 90 • and there was no asymmetry; transfer occurred in a proportionally symmetrical manner to both 30 • (43%) and 90 • (45%). The proportion of transfer was also smaller than in Leach et al (2021).…”

“…The dependent variable PTT20 (proportion of time on target within a tolerance range of 20 • ) is an established measure of assessing performance of the task over time (see Wilson et al, 2010a,b for initial use, andSnapp-Childs et al, 2015, for a detailed comparison with other measures). The standardised bandwidth of ±20 • has repeatedly captured changes in performance over the course of learning, so it is reasonable that this experiment uses this bandwidth (for previous studies closely aligned to this one that also use this bandwidth, see Snapp-Childs et al, 2015;Leach et al, 2021).…”

“…We explained the transfer as being supported by the use of relative position. In this article, we replicated the design of Leach et al (2021) but now trained participants on 60 • . We identified that this also led to them switching information variables to relative position, but contrary to our predictions, this time the learning supported transfer to 30 • and 90 • .…”

Ecological mechanisms in cognitive science

“…There remains much to do, but the model also provides the framework for the next round of mechanistic empirical research, on learning (e.g. Leach et al, 2019;Snapp-Childs et al, 2015), changes in the perception-action system with ageing (Coats et al, 2013(Coats et al, , 2014Ren et al, 2015) and the interplay between visual and haptic perception of relative phase (Pickavance et al, 2018).…”