Acquisition of the Temporal and Ordinal Structure of Movement Sequences in Incidental Learning

Abstract

O'Reilly JX, McCarthy KJ, Capizzi M, Nobre AC. Acquisition of the temporal and ordinal structure of movement sequences in incidental learning. J Neurophysiol 99: 2731-2735, 2008. First published March 5, 2008 doi:10.1152/jn.01141.2007. We investigated the acquisition and integration of temporal and ordinal sequence information in an incidental learning model of motor skill acquisition (the serial reaction time task). Human participants were exposed to a stimulus-response sequence that had temporal structure, ordinal structure, or both. By changing the temporal or ordinal structure, or both, we were able to ask two questions: first, does a regular temporal structure facilitate learning of an ordinal sequence and second, is a temporal sequence, presented in the context of a random ordinal sequence of finger movements, "picked up" through incidental learning? We found that a predictable temporal structure greatly facilitated the learning of an ordinal sequence but was not learned when presented in isolation. The results suggest that when motor skills are acquired under incidental learning conditions, timing is represented at a level specific to the ordinal sequence of movements rather than as an independent temporal template. I N T R O D U C T I O NSkilled actions often incorporate a precise temporal pattern-for example, in speech, and in playing a musical instrument, timing is crucial. Even when the temporal structure of an action is not essential to meaning, the timing with which learned actions are executed tends to be invariant, revealing the importance of temporal structure in learned motor behaviors. For example, the typical timing of pen strokes determines individuals' handwriting (Wright 1993), whereas skilled typists develop invariant temporal patterns for common words (Terzuolo and Viviani 1980).In the field of motor learning, the acquisition of temporal patterns of movement has been relatively neglected while research has traditionally focused on the learning of ordinal sequences of movements (Hikosaka et al. 2002;Tanji and Shima 1994;Toni et al. 1998) The SRT is a useful model for real-world skill acquisition because learning is incidental-participants are simply instructed to respond to incoming information, and regularities in the pattern of inputs or responses are "picked up" by the brain and used to facilitate performance. This kind of bottom-up or unsupervised learning mimics motor-skill acquisition in which people are often unable to verbalize or even recognize consciously their motor strategies. In contrast, those studies that have so far addressed the temporal aspect of motor learning have generally involved explicit memorization of the temporal sequence (Bengtsson et al. 2004;Ramnani and Passingham 2001;Sakai et al. 2002;Ullen and Bengtsson 2003). 2 The use of explicit training raises the possibility that temporal learning is underpinned by sensory rather than motor representations, a hypothesis supported by engagement of auditory cortex in the temporal tasks, but not nontemporal control ta...

Quantifying transfer after perceptual-motor sequence learning: how inflexible is implicit learning?

“…The lack of measureable increases in trained sequence performance in just the timing-response hand (RH) may suggest that learning of a timing sequence independent of ordinal action responding is not occurring here, and is in line with previous reports (O’Reilly et al, 2008; Shin & Ivry, 2002). Alternately, the lack of transfer may be related to the fact that the timing response is made after the initial order response since the left-hand button press (order) is the first part of a two-part response which precedes an accurately timed right-hand strum.…”

“…Transfer was not found in the O N T P condition even though the individual timing response characteristics did not change from the trained condition. The partial performance transfer of order (when timing was changed) but not timing (when order was changed) fits with previous SRT work suggesting that timing is merely a component of an action order sequence which is not learned independently (O’Reilly et al, 2008; Shin & Ivry, 2002). …”

“…Both Shin and Ivry (2002) and O’Reilly, McCarthy, Capizzi, and Nobre (2008) found that changing just the inter-cue timing resulted in some transfer of sequence knowledge, suggesting that the timing and response order were represented independently and that response order was more important to accurate responding. However, when we previously examined this question using the SISL task (Gobel, Sanchez, & Reber, 2011), disrupting either source of information led to an apparent absence of transfer again.…”

The effects of ordinal load on incidental temporal learning

“…The latter happens, for instance, when the rhythm of a song is used to sing different melodies. Studies using uncorrelated temporal sequences (Buchner & Steffens, 2001;O'Reilly, McCarthy, Capizzi, & Nobre, 2008;Shin & Ivry, 2002) found that they are typically not learned in an incidental manner. For instance, Shin & Ivry (2002) analysed the learning of seven-and eight-element temporal sequences embedded in eight-element ordinal sequences, and found that only eight-element (correlated) temporal sequences were learned.…”

“…5 learning. Concerning uncorrelated temporal sequences, it was first suggested that they are not learned because temporal representations are dependent on ordinal ones when learning is incidental (O'Reilly, McCarthy, Capizzi, & Nobre, 2008). However, Ullén and Bengsston (2003) provided an alternative explanation.…”