Investigating the relationship among errorless motor training, motor performance, and visuomotor behaviors

Abstract

In these seven studies, the relationships among errorless motor training, motor performance, and visuomotor behaviors were investigated. The first two studies in Chapter 2 recruited the healthy young (study 1) and older (study 2) adults to participate in the computer-based reaching task to explore the effect of errorless motor training on motor performance and gaze behaviors. Results revealed errorless motor training could increase fixation duration on target among both young and older adults, which implied that errorless motor training might successfully modify the visual selective attentional process to concentrate on the relevant information and neglect irrelevant visual distraction, differently from errorful and normal motor training. In Chapter 3, two studies aimed to investigate the errorless motor training effect on motor performance and gaze behaviors in the same computer-based reaching motor task as Chapter 2 under the simulated visual deficit by blocking parts of online visual feedback of hand-controlled mouse cursor among healthy young (study 3) and older (study 4) adults. It was found that errorless motor training decreased fixation duration among both young and older adults, indicating that errorless motor training might modify perceptual and attentional processes under a simulated visual deficit in this reaching motor task, differently from errorful and normal training. Chapter 4 assessed the influence on motor performance and gaze behaviors after taking errorless motor training in a daily-life reaching motor task among healthy young and older adults. It was revealed that errorless motor training improved motor performance by increasing movement accuracy and reducing movement variability, among both young and older adults in normal vision. In addition, errorless trainees conducted higher movement accuracy and less movement variability under the simulated visual deficit than errorful and normal trainees in the two age groups. Furthermore, errorless motor training decreased fixation duration among young and older adults. The errorless motor training may induce a multisensory reweighting by up-weighting on proprioception and down-weighting on vision to facilitate movement execution in the daily-life reaching motor task. Chapter 5 employed the errorless motor training in the Y balance reaching task (study 7), which focused on improving dynamic balance ability. Findings demonstrated that errorless motor training improved dynamic balance ability and proprioceptive ability significantly when compared with errorful and normal motor training. Also, fixation duration and eye activity on target decreased, which suggested the decreasing demand for visual information. The decreasing demand for visual information implied the down-weighting on vision for movement execution and further this down-weighting on vision was successfully compensated by up-weighting on proprioception. This multisensory reweighting by the down-weighting on vision and up-weighting on proprioception might contribute to improving dynamic balance ability in this Y balance reaching task. The overall findings imply that errorless motor training could contribute to the improvement of motor performance by successful modification of gaze behaviors, suggesting that errorless motor training may modify the perceptual and attentional processes to facilitate movement execution in different reaching motor tasks.