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

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  • Robert J van Beers
  • Yor van der Meer
  • Richard M Veerman

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert J van Beers & Yor van der Meer & Richard M Veerman, 2013. "What Autocorrelation Tells Us about Motor Variability: Insights from Dart Throwing," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(5), pages 1-8, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0064332
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0064332
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Robert J van Beers, 2012. "How Does Our Motor System Determine Its Learning Rate?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(11), pages 1-17, November.
    2. Robert J van Beers, 2008. "Saccadic Eye Movements Minimize the Consequences of Motor Noise," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 3(4), pages 1-8, April.
    3. Christopher M. Harris & Daniel M. Wolpert, 1998. "Signal-dependent noise determines motor planning," Nature, Nature, vol. 394(6695), pages 780-784, August.
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    1. Daniel Blustein & Ahmed Shehata & Kevin Englehart & Jonathon Sensinger, 2018. "Conventional analysis of trial-by-trial adaptation is biased: Empirical and theoretical support using a Bayesian estimator," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(12), pages 1-15, December.

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