Observation of an expert model induces a skilled movement coordination pattern in a single session of intermittent practice

Factors affecting expert performance in bid evaluation: An integrated approach

Experts play a crucial role in underpinning decision-making in most management situations. While recent studies have disclosed the impacts of individuals’ inherent cognition and the external environment on expert performance, these two-dimensional mechanisms remain poorly understood. In this study, we identified 14 factors that influence expert performance in a bid evaluation and applied cross-impact matrix multiplication to examine the interdependence of the factors. The results indicate that the two dimension-related factors affect each other within a person–environment system, and a poor situation perception gives rise to the deviation of expert performance. Expert performance can be improved if external supervision and expertise are strengthened through deliberate practices. The study proposes a new expert performance research tool, elucidates its mechanism in bid evaluation from a cognitive psychology perspective, and provides guidelines for its improvement in workplace contexts.

The online and offline effects of changing movement timing variability during training on a finger-opposition task

In motor learning tasks, there is mixed evidence for whether increased task-relevant variability in early learning stages leads to improved outcomes. One problem is that there may be a connection between skill level and motor variability, such that participants who initially have more variability may also perform worse on the task, so will have more room to improve. To avoid this confound, we experimentally manipulated the amount of movement timing variability (MTV) during training to test whether it improves performance. Based on previous studies showing that most of the improvement in finger-opposition tasks comes from optimizing the relative onset time of the finger movements, we used auditory cues (beeps) to guide the onset times of sequential movements during a training session, and then assessed motor performance after the intervention. Participants were assigned to three groups that either: (a) followed a prescribed random rhythm for their finger touches (Variable MTV), (b) followed a fixed rhythm (Fixed control MTV), or (c) produced the entire sequence following a single beep (Unsupervised control MTV). While the intervention was successful in increasing MTV during training for the Variable group, it did not lead to improved outcomes post-training compared to either control group, and the use of fixed timing led to significantly worse performance compared to the Unsupervised control group. These results suggest that manipulating MTV through auditory cues does not produce greater learning than unconstrained training in motor sequence tasks.

The dissociable effects of reward on sequential motor behavior

Reward has consistently been shown to enhance motor behavior; however, its beneficial effects appear to be largely unspecific. For example, reward is associated with both rapid and training-dependent improvements in performance, with a mechanistic account of these effects currently lacking. Here we tested the hypothesis that these distinct reward-based improvements are driven by dissociable reward types: monetary incentive and performance feedback. Whereas performance feedback provides information on how well a motor task has been completed (knowledge of performance), monetary incentive increases the motivation to perform optimally without providing a performance-based learning signal. Experiment 1 showed that groups who received monetary incentive rapidly improved movement times (MTs), using a novel sequential reaching task. In contrast, only groups with correct performance-based feedback showed learning-related improvements. Importantly, pairing both maximized MT performance gains and accelerated movement fusion. Fusion describes an optimization process during which neighboring sequential movements blend together to form singular actions. Results from experiment 2 served as a replication and showed that fusion led to enhanced performance speed while also improving movement efficiency through increased smoothness. Finally, experiment 3 showed that these improvements in performance persist for 24 h even without reward availability. This highlights the dissociable impact of monetary incentive and performance feedback, with their combination maximizing performance gains and leading to stable improvements in the speed and efficiency of sequential actions.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Our work provides a mechanistic framework for how reward influences motor behavior. Specifically, we show that rapid improvements in speed and accuracy are driven by reward presented in the form of money, whereas knowledge of performance through performance feedback leads to training-based improvements. Importantly, combining both maximized performance gains and led to improvements in movement quality through fusion, which describes an optimization process during which sequential movements blend into a single action.

Practice schedule and testing per se affect children's transfer abilities in a grapho-motor task

Children's ability to transfer the gains of a motor experience, such as learning to write a letter, to novel conditions, such as cursive writing of the same letter, are affected by the way in which the learning experience is parsed. Parsing may have limitations because a short session may hamper the engagement of procedural memory consolidation processes. Here, we compared the effects of two practice schedules with the total amount of practice identical training provided in a single-session practice versus multi-session practice, wherein each session on its own was insufficient for generating long-term gains. A total of 40 7- and 8-year-old children practiced the production of a novel letter form by connecting dots, namely, the Invented Letter Task (ILT). Multiple ILT-related transfer tasks were assessed at 24 h post-training and again at 4-5 weeks post-training. Although by the end of training the single-session practice group outperformed the multi-session practice group in speed and accuracy, at 24 h post-training both groups showed comparable gains. However, after multi-session practice, children were as fast or faster and more accurate in the transfer tasks. By 4-5 weeks post-training, the multi-session practice group showed larger gains in the trained condition, a speed advantage in the transfer tasks, and a significant improvement on the transfer tasks. The results suggest that parsing training over several brief sessions may lead to long-term gains in children's grapho-motor skills. Moreover, multi-session practice protocols may contribute to the potential for transfer and to more effective learning from experiences such as transfer tasks.

Analogies can speed up the motor learning process

Analogies have been shown to improve motor learning in various tasks and settings. In this study we tested whether applying analogies can shorten the motor learning process and induce insight and skill improvement in tasks that usually demand many hours of practice. Kinematic measures were used to quantify participant’s skill and learning dynamics. For this purpose, we used a drawing task, in which subjects drew lines to connect dots, and a mirror game, in which subjects tracked a moving stimulus. After establishing a baseline, subjects were given an analogy, explicit instructions or no further instruction. We compared their improvement in skill (quantified by coarticulation or smoothness), accuracy and movement duration. Subjects in the analogy and explicit groups improved their coarticulation in the target task, while significant differences were found in the mirror game only at a slow movement frequency between analogy and controls.

We conclude that a verbal analogy can be a useful tool for rapidly changing motor kinematics and movement strategy in some circumstances, although in the tasks selected it did not produce better performance in most measurements than explicit guidance. Furthermore, we observed that different movement facets may improve independently from others, and may be selectively affected by verbal instructions. These results suggest an important role for the type of instruction in motor learning.