Rewarding imperfect performance reduces adaptive changes

Could a pat on the back affect motor adaptation? Recent studies indeed suggest that rewards can boost motor adaptation. However, the rewards used were typically reward gradients that carried quite detailed information about performance. We investigated whether simple binary rewards affected how participants learned to correct for a visual rotation of performance feedback in a 3D pointing task. To do so, we asked participants to align their unseen hand with virtual target cubes in alternating blocks with and without spatial performance feedback. Forty participants were assigned to one of two groups: a ‘spatial only’ group, in which the feedback consisted of showing the (perturbed) endpoint of the hand, or to a ‘spatial & reward’ group, in which a reward could be received in addition to the spatial feedback. In addition, six participants were tested in a ‘reward only’ group. Binary reward was given when the participants’ hand landed in a virtual ‘hit area’ that was adapted to individual performance to reward about half the trials. The results show a typical pattern of adaptation in both the ‘spatial only’ and the ‘spatial & reward’ groups, whereas the ‘reward only’ group was unable to adapt. The rewards did not affect the overall pattern of adaptation in the ‘spatial & reward’ group. However, on a trial-by-trial basis, the rewards reduced adaptive changes to spatial errors. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00221-015-4540-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Relative finger position influences whether you can localize tactile stimuli

To investigate whether the relative positions of the fingers influence tactile localization, participants were asked to localize tactile stimuli applied to their fingertips. We measured the location and rate of errors for three finger configurations: fingers stretched out and together so that they are touching each other, fingers stretched out and spread apart maximally and fingers stretched out with the two hands on top of each other so that the fingers are interwoven. When the fingers contact each other, it is likely that the error rate to the adjacent fingers will be higher than when the fingers are spread apart. In particular, we reasoned that localization would probably improve when the fingers are spread. We aimed at assessing whether such adjacency was measured in external coordinates (taking proprioception into account) or on the body (in skin coordinates). The results confirmed that the error rate was lower when the fingers were spread. However, there was no decrease in error rate to neighbouring fingertips in the fingers spread condition in comparison with the fingers together condition. In an additional experiment, we showed that the lower error rate when the fingers were spread was not related to the continuous tactile input from the neighbouring fingers when the fingers were together. The current results suggest that information from proprioception is taken into account in perceiving the location of a stimulus on one of the fingertips

Haptic search with finger movements: using more fingers does not necessarily reduce search times

Two haptic serial search tasks were used to investigate how the separations between items, and the number of fingers used to scan them, influence the search time and search strategy. In both tasks participants had to search for a target (cross) between a fixed number of non-targets (circles). The items were placed in a straight line. The target’s position was varied within blocks, and inter-item separation was varied between blocks. In the first experiment participants used their index finger to scan the display. As expected, search time depended on target position as well as on item separation. For larger separations participants’ movements were jerky, resembling ‘saccades’ and ‘fixations’, while for the shortest separation the movements were smooth. When only considering time in contact with an item, search times were the same for all separation conditions. Furthermore, participants never continued their movement after they encountered the target. These results suggest that participants did not use the time during which they were moving between the items to process information about the items. The search times were a little shorter than those in a static search experiment (Overvliet et al. in Percept Psychophys, 2007a), where multiple items were presented to the fingertips simultaneously. To investigate whether this is because the finger was moving or because only one finger was stimulated, we conducted a second experiment in which we asked participants to put three fingers in line and use them together to scan the items. Doing so increased the time in contact with the items for all separations, so search times were presumably longer in the static search experiment because multiple fingers were involved. This may be caused by the time that it takes to switch from one finger to the other

Irrelevant tactile stimulation biases visual exploration in external coordinates

Ossandón JP, König P, Heed T. Irrelevant tactile stimulation biases visual exploration in external coordinates. Scientific Reports. 2015;5(1): 10664

Rewarding imperfect motor performance reduces adaptive changes

Could a pat on the back affect motor adaptation? Recent studies indeed suggest that rewards can boost motor adaptation. However, the rewards used were typically reward gradients that carried quite detailed information about performance. We investigated whether simple binary rewards affected how participants learned to correct for a visual rotation of performance feedback in a 3D pointing task. To do so, we asked participants to align their unseen hand with virtual target cubes in alternating blocks with and without spatial performance feedback. Forty participants were assigned to one of two groups: a ‘spatial only’ group, in which the feedback consisted of showing the (perturbed) endpoint of the hand, or to a ‘spatial & reward’ group, in which a reward could be received in addition to the spatial feedback. In addition, six participants were tested in a ‘reward only’ group. Binary reward was given when the participants’ hand landed in a virtual ‘hit area’ that was adapted to individual performance to reward about half the trials. The results show a typical pattern of adaptation in both the ‘spatial only’ and the ‘spatial & reward’ groups, whereas the ‘reward only’ group was unable to adapt. The rewards did not affect the overall pattern of adaptation in the ‘spatial & reward’ group. However, on a trial-by-trial basis, the rewards reduced adaptive changes to spatial errors

Haptic search is more efficient when the stimulus can be interpreted as consisting of fewer items

In a typical haptic search task, separate items are presented to individual fingertips. The time to find a specific item generally increases with the number of items, but is it the number of items or the number of fingers that determines search time? To find out, we conducted haptic search experiments in which horizontal lines made of swell paper were presented to either two, four or six of the participants’ fingertips. The task for the participant was to lift the finger under which they did not feel (part of) a line. In one of the conditions separate non-aligned lines were presented to the fingertips so that the number of items increased with the number of fingers used. In two other conditions the participants had to find an interruption in a single straight line under one of the fingertips. These conditions differed in the size of the gap. If only the number of items in the tactile display were important, search times would increase with the number of fingers in the first condition, but not depend on the number of fingers used in the other two conditions. In all conditions we found that the search time increased with the number of fingers used. However, this increase was smaller in the single line condition in which the gap was large enough for one finger to not make any contact with the line. Thus, the number of fingers involved determines the haptic search time, but search is more efficient when the stimulus can be interpreted as consisting of fewer items