Study on correlation between motor and memory learning

Abstract

The Knowledge of the Result for motor learning, relationship between subjective estimation of the error and relative frequency of external feedback. Research on the learning of a motor task, although generally conducted on healthy individuals, can offer useful indications about the best strategies to be adopted in the rehabilitation of subjects with CNS lesions. In fact, rehabilitation can be considered as a learning process in pathological conditions. There are numerous experimental evidences that, a lower relative frequency (FR) with which it is provided to the one who learns the knowledge of the result (CR) about the outcome of the response, and the request of the formulation of a subjective estimate before the CR (SS) both positively affect the fixation of the motor task. Recently, however, the possibility of an interaction between these two variables has been suggested, in the sense that the subject, when he must formulate a subjective estimate of the error, would benefit from a greater, and not a lesser, FR. To verify this, 60 healthy young subjects (mean age 24.1 ± 3.2) performed a simple task of producing a concentric work target with flexed elbow muscles during isokinetic contraction at a rate of 30 degrees / second. During the practice trials, subjects a) were required, or were not required, to estimate the error made in the newly concluded trial, and b) CR was provided after each trial (100% FR) or after one in every five trials (20 % FR). To further stress the difference between the subjects who were or should not formulate an SS, the latter was asked, immediately after the conclusion of the trial, to perform a simple mental calculation. All subjects performed 15 sets of 10 repetitions of the task during a single practice session. A retention test (1 set of 10 repetitions without CR or SS) was performed the following day. The comparison between the groups in the retention test was performed with the analysis of the variance, before and after adjustment for the initial conditions. The results showed that, after adjusting for the initial conditions, the group of subjects who received CR with 100% FR and who had to formulate the SS during the practice period, performed the retention test in a significantly better way.