Improvement of Obstacle Avoidance on a Compliant Surface during Transfer to a Novel Visual Task after Variable Practice under Unusual Visual Conditions

Abstract

Summary Previous work has shown that variable practice facilitates adaptation to novel visuomotor changes during throwing tasks and during obstacle avoidance on a solid floor. We asked if locomotor skill on an obstacle avoidance task on a compliant surface, and in a novel visuomotor environment, improved through training with variable practice on visuomotor changes. 61 normal adults practiced traversing the obstacle course; half the trials were done without visual changes, half the trials were done while wearing either sham or visual distortion lenses in single lens or multiple lens groups. Transfer tests on the obstacle course while wearing novel lenses showed significantly better scores with multiple lenses than sham; the single lens group did not differ from sham or multiple lens groups. Thus, performance in a novel visual environment, on a compliant surface improves most with variable practice training.

Human manual control performance in hyper-gravity

“…The adjustment was similar in that it required an adjustment of the subjects' "gain" of their motor response for a given perceived angle, but different in that the exact magnitude of the adjustment was novel. This finding supports the concept of "metacognition" or "learning to learn" (Bock et al 2001;Roller et al 2001;Seidler 2004;Seidler 2005;Roller et al 2009;Batson et al 2011;Turnham et al 2012), in which recent adaptive experiences in relevant environments enhance the capability to adapt to other novel, but similar, environments. This is the first evidence that this effect occurs for manual control adaptation to altered gravity levels.…”

“…In other sensorimotor adaptation paradigms, there is evidence that previous experiences adapting to relevant environments can enhance an individual's ability to adapt to novel, but similar, altered environments (a concept often referred to as "learning to learn") (Roller et al 2001;Roller et al 2009). For example, pre-exposure to novel locomotion environments can improve subsequent adaptation of gait parameters (Batson et al 2011) and previous training in random altered visual-motor environments can enhance the learning of future alterations (Turnham et al 2012).…”

Enhancing astronaut performance using sensorimotor adaptability training

“…Next, we asked if adaptive plasticity of systems controlling a more complex activity, such as obstacle avoidance during locomotion, can also be improved by SA training (Cohen et al, 2005 ; Roller et al, 2009 ). In the Cohen et al ( 2005 ) study, subjects wore lenses while they were trained using several challenges involving both walking and standing balance tasks that differed from the criterion obstacle avoidance task.…”

COMPASS: Computations for Orientation and Motion Perception in Altered Sensorimotor States

“…This had an interesting effect on the final gravity transition, in which adaptation was initiated faster, but then took longer to converge upon the actual magnitude of gravity post-transition. This is an interesting prediction in the context of the concept of "learning to learn, " in which recent adaptations have been observed to enable faster subsequent adaptations, even to novel transitions (Roller et al, 2001(Roller et al, , 2009Seidler, 2004;Batson et al, 2011). While there is empirical evidence of "learning to learn" benefits specific to adapting to novel gravity transitions (Clark et al, 2015a), future studies should aim to quantify the early vs. late adaptation rates (as opposed to just overall) given these interesting model predictions.…”