Recent research on mental representation of complex action has revealed distinct differences in the structure of representational frameworks between experts and novices. More recently, research on the development of mental representation structure has elicited functional changes in novices' representations as a result of practice. However, research investigating if and how mental practice adds to this adaptation process is lacking. In the present study, we examined the influence of mental practice (i.e., motor imagery rehearsal) on both putting performance and the development of one's representation of the golf putt during early skill acquisition. Novice golfers (N = 52) practiced the task of golf putting under one of four different practice conditions: mental, physical, mental-physical combined, and no practice. Participants were tested prior to and after a practice phase, as well as after a three day retention interval. Mental representation structures of the putt were measured, using the structural dimensional analysis of mental representation. This method provides psychometric data on the distances and groupings of basic action concepts in long-term memory. Additionally, putting accuracy and putting consistency were measured using two-dimensional error scores of each putt. Findings revealed significant performance improvements over the course of practice together with functional adaptations in mental representation structure. Interestingly, after three days of practice, the mental representations of participants who incorporated mental practice into their practice regime displayed representation structures that were more similar to a functional structure than did participants who did not incorporate mental practice. The findings of the present study suggest that mental practice promotes the cognitive adaptation process during motor learning, leading to more elaborate representations than physical practice only.
Despite the wealth of research on differences between experts and novices with respect to their perceptual-cognitive background (e.g., mental representations, gaze behavior), little is known about the change of these perceptual-cognitive components over the course of motor learning. In the present study, changes in one’s mental representation, quiet eye behavior, and outcome performance were examined over the course of skill acquisition as it related to physical and mental practice. Novices (N = 45) were assigned to one of three conditions: physical practice, combined physical plus mental practice, and no practice. Participants in the practice groups trained on a golf putting task over the course of 3 days, either by repeatedly executing the putt, or by both executing and imaging the putt. Findings revealed improvements in putting performance across both practice conditions. Regarding the perceptual-cognitive changes, participants practicing mentally and physically revealed longer quiet eye durations as well as more elaborate representation structures in comparison to the control group, while this was not the case for participants who underwent physical practice only. Thus, in the present study, combined mental and physical practice led to both formation of mental representations in long-term memory and longer quiet eye durations. Interestingly, the length of the quiet eye directly related to the degree of elaborateness of the underlying mental representation, supporting the notion that the quiet eye reflects cognitive processing. This study is the first to show that the quiet eye becomes longer in novices practicing a motor action. Moreover, the findings of the present study suggest that perceptual and cognitive adaptations co-occur over the course of motor learning.
Along with superior performance, research indicates that expertise is associated with a number of mediating cognitive adaptations. To this extent, extensive practice is associated with the development of general and task-specific mental representations, which play an important role in the organization and control of action. Recently, new experimental methods have been developed, which allow for investigating the organization and structure of these representations, along with the functional structure of the movement kinematics. In the current article, we present a new approach for examining the overlap between skill representations and motor output. In doing so, we first present an architecture model, which addresses links between biomechanical and cognitive levels of motor control. Next, we review the state of the art in assessing memory structures underlying complex action. Following we present a new spatio-temporal decomposition method for illuminating the functional structure of movement kinematics, and finally, we apply these methods to investigate the overlap between the structure of motor representations in memory and their corresponding kinematic structures. Our aim is to understand the extent to which the output at a kinematic level is governed by representations at a cognitive level of motor control.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.