Augmented Kinematic Feedback for Motor Learning

Although the study of feedback about goal achievement (knowledge of results, KR) has been important for the development principles of augmented information feedback in simple skills, there is reason to question the generalizability of these findings to many common learning situations. A more appropriate type of information for skill learning appears to be augmented kinematic (or kinetic) feedback regarding the movement pattern. The experiments presented here extend recent findings about KR to a paradigm involving kinematic feedback. In Experiment 1, we examined how several kinds of temporal and spatial kinematic information supplement KR in learning. Spatial kinematic variables were more effective than temporal variables, as indicated by performance in a retention test without kinematic feedback. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the schedule of augmented kinematic feedback in a method that paralleled previous KR work. We contrasted averaged schedules of augmented feedback, in which information was given either after every trial or as averaged information after every set of five trials. On retention tests without kinematic feedback given 1 day and 1 week after acquisition, averaged schedules led to enhanced performance over an every-trial format. Together, these results begin to define the variables important in kinematic feedback, and suggest that this feedback may influence learning in ways parallel to KR.