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What Autocorrelation Tells Us about Motor Variability: Insights from Dart Throwing

In sports such as golf and darts it is important that one can produce ballistic movements of an object towards a goal location with as little variability as possible. A factor that influences this variability is the extent to which motor planning is updated from movement to movement based on observe...

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Autores principales: van Beers, Robert J., van der Meer, Yor, Veerman, Richard M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3656833/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23691199
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0064332
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author van Beers, Robert J.
van der Meer, Yor
Veerman, Richard M.
author_facet van Beers, Robert J.
van der Meer, Yor
Veerman, Richard M.
author_sort van Beers, Robert J.
collection PubMed
description In sports such as golf and darts it is important that one can produce ballistic movements of an object towards a goal location with as little variability as possible. A factor that influences this variability is the extent to which motor planning is updated from movement to movement based on observed errors. Previous work has shown that for reaching movements, our motor system uses the learning rate (the proportion of an error that is corrected for in the planning of the next movement) that is optimal for minimizing the endpoint variability. Here we examined whether the learning rate is hard-wired and therefore automatically optimal, or whether it is optimized through experience. We compared the performance of experienced dart players and beginners in a dart task. A hallmark of the optimal learning rate is that the lag-1 autocorrelation of movement endpoints is zero. We found that the lag-1 autocorrelation of experienced dart players was near zero, implying a near-optimal learning rate, whereas it was negative for beginners, suggesting a larger than optimal learning rate. We conclude that learning rates for trial-by-trial motor learning are optimized through experience. This study also highlights the usefulness of the lag-1 autocorrelation as an index of performance in studying motor-skill learning.
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spelling pubmed-36568332013-05-20 What Autocorrelation Tells Us about Motor Variability: Insights from Dart Throwing van Beers, Robert J. van der Meer, Yor Veerman, Richard M. PLoS One Research Article In sports such as golf and darts it is important that one can produce ballistic movements of an object towards a goal location with as little variability as possible. A factor that influences this variability is the extent to which motor planning is updated from movement to movement based on observed errors. Previous work has shown that for reaching movements, our motor system uses the learning rate (the proportion of an error that is corrected for in the planning of the next movement) that is optimal for minimizing the endpoint variability. Here we examined whether the learning rate is hard-wired and therefore automatically optimal, or whether it is optimized through experience. We compared the performance of experienced dart players and beginners in a dart task. A hallmark of the optimal learning rate is that the lag-1 autocorrelation of movement endpoints is zero. We found that the lag-1 autocorrelation of experienced dart players was near zero, implying a near-optimal learning rate, whereas it was negative for beginners, suggesting a larger than optimal learning rate. We conclude that learning rates for trial-by-trial motor learning are optimized through experience. This study also highlights the usefulness of the lag-1 autocorrelation as an index of performance in studying motor-skill learning. Public Library of Science 2013-05-17 /pmc/articles/PMC3656833/ /pubmed/23691199 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0064332 Text en © 2013 van Beers et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
van Beers, Robert J.
van der Meer, Yor
Veerman, Richard M.
What Autocorrelation Tells Us about Motor Variability: Insights from Dart Throwing
title What Autocorrelation Tells Us about Motor Variability: Insights from Dart Throwing
title_full What Autocorrelation Tells Us about Motor Variability: Insights from Dart Throwing
title_fullStr What Autocorrelation Tells Us about Motor Variability: Insights from Dart Throwing
title_full_unstemmed What Autocorrelation Tells Us about Motor Variability: Insights from Dart Throwing
title_short What Autocorrelation Tells Us about Motor Variability: Insights from Dart Throwing
title_sort what autocorrelation tells us about motor variability: insights from dart throwing
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3656833/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23691199
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0064332
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