The differential consolidation of perceptual and motor learning in skill acquisition

Implicit skill learning is an unconscious way of learning which underlies not only motor but also cognitive and social skills. This form of learning is based on both motor and perceptual information. Although many studies have investigated the perceptual and motor components of “online” skill learning, the effect of consolidation on perceptual and motor characteristics of skill learning has not been studied to our knowledge. In our research we used a sequence learning task to determine if consolidation had the same or different effect on the perceptual and the motor components of skill acquisition. We introduced a 12-hour (including or not including sleep) and a 24-hour (diurnal control) delay between the learning and the testing phase with AM-PM, PM-AM, AM-AM and PM-PM groups, in order to examine whether the offline period had differential effects on perceptual and motor learning. Although both perceptual and motor learning were significant in the testing phase, results showed that motor knowledge transfers more effectively than perceptual knowledge during the offline period, irrespective of whether sleep occurred or not and whether there was a 12- or 24-hour delay period between the learning and the testing phase. These results have important implications for the debate concerning perceptual/motor learning and the role of sleep in skill acquisition

Tracking changes in spatial frequency sensitivity during natural image processing in school age: an event-related potential study

Several studies have shown that behavioral and electrophysiological correlates of processing visual images containing low or high spatial frequency (LSF or HSF) information undergo development after early childhood. However, the maturation of spatial frequency sensitivity in school-age has been investigated using abstract stimuli only. The aim of the current study was to assess how LSF and HSF features affect the processing of everyday photographs at the behavioral and electrophysiological levels in children aged 7-15 years and adults. We presented grayscale images containing either animals or vehicles and their luminance-matched modified versions filtered at low or high spatial frequencies. Modulations of classification accuracy, reaction time and visual event-related potentials (posterior P1 and N1 components) were compared across five developmental groups and three image types. We found disproportionately worse response accuracies for LSF stimuli relative to HSF images in children aged 7-8 years, an effect that was accompanied by smaller LSF-evoked P1 amplitudes in this age period. At 7-8 years of age, P1 and N1 amplitudes were modulated by HSF and LSF stimuli (P1: HSF>LSF; N1: LSF>HSF), with a gradual shift towards the opposite pattern (P1: LSF>HSF; N1: HSF>LSF) with increasing age. Our results indicate that early cortical processing of both spatial frequency ranges undergo substantial development in school-age, with a relative delay of LSF analysis, and underline the utility of our paradigm in tracking the maturation of LSF vs. HSF sensitivity in this age group