Explicit Instruction May Impair the Transfer of Motor Adaptation in an Upper Extremity Motor Task

Abstract

This study focused on explicit instruction and evaluated the differences in task performance between participants who were instructed to employ the change and those who were not. Ninety-three healthy young adults were assigned to the accurate information group (AG; n = 31), misinformation group (MG; n = 31), and non-information group (NG; n = 31). All participants manipulated a mouse to track a moving target on a screen with a cursor. The cursor was rotated to 60° in the clockwise direction from the actual mouse position during the 1st to 5th blocks (i.e., motor adaptation task). Subsequently, in the 6th block (i.e., transfer task), we gradually changed the angle of rotation from 60° to 80° to prevent from noticing the change. Participants in the AG were instructed accurate experimental information. Participants in the MG were instructed that the angle of rotation was 60° during the 1st to 6th blocks. Participants in the NG were instructed to manipulate the cursor movement only. The results indicated that an average error distance in the AG was significantly lower than that in the NG in the 6th block. This study suggested that explicit instruction may impair the transfer of motor adaptation in this setting.

Keywords:

• transfer of motor adaptation
• motor skills
• explicit instruction

Disclosure Statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethics Approval

All experimental procedures in this study were approved by the Ethics Committee of Tsukuba International University (approval number: R03-10) and performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (World-Medical-Association, 2013). All participants provided written informed consent.

Data Availability Statement

The datasets generated for this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Tsukuba International University Fund for the promotion of research (representative: Takehide Kimura).