Citation

Sumanapala DK, Fish LA, Jones AL, Cross ES. Acta Psychol. 2017; 175: 42-49.

Affiliation

Social Brain in Action Laboratory, School of Psychology, Bangor University, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2AS Wales, United Kingdom. Electronic address: e.cross@bangor.ac.uk.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.actpsy.2017.02.008

PMID

28284106

Abstract

Learning a new motor skill typically requires converting actions observed from a third-person perspective into fluid motor commands executed from a first-person perspective. In the present study, we test the hypothesis that during motor learning, the ability to discriminate between actions that have been observed and actions that have been executed is associated with learning aptitude, as assessed by a general measure of physical performance. Using a multi-day dance-training paradigm with a group of dance-naïve participants, we investigated whether actions that had been regularly observed could be discriminated from similar actions that had been physically practised over the course of three days, or a further set of similar actions that remained untrained. Training gains and performance scores at test were correlated with participants' ability to discriminate between observed and practised actions, suggesting that an individual's ability to differentiate between visual versus visuomotor action encoding is associated with general motor learning.

Copyright © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Action memory; Dance; Motion tracking; Motor learning; Observational learning