Context-dependent motor skill and the role of practice

• Published in: Psychological research Vol. 76; no. 6; pp. 812 - 820
• Main Authors: Ruitenberg, Marit F. L., De Kleine, Elian, Van der Lubbe, Rob H. J., Verwey, Willem B., Abrahamse, Elger L.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.11.2012; Springer; Springer Nature B.V; Springer-Verlag
• Subjects: Activity levels. Psychomotricity; Adolescent; Adult; Automation; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Biological and medical sciences; Cognitive psychology; Cues; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Indexing in process; Learning; Learning - physiology; Male; Memory; Motor Skills - physiology; Original; Original Article; Practice (Psychology); Psychological research; Psychology; Psychology Research; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Psychomotor activities; Reaction Time; Serial Reaction Time Task; Practice Phase; Sequence Learning; Irrelevant Stimulus; Relevant Sequence; Context; Human; Motor skill; Practice; Cognition; Experimental study; Motricity
• ISSN: 0340-0727; 1430-2772
• DOI: 10.1007/s00426-011-0388-6

Research has shown that retrieval of learned information is better when the original learning context is reinstated during testing than when this context is changed. Recently, such contextual dependencies have also been found for perceptual-motor behavior. The current study investigated the nature of context-dependent learning in the discrete sequence production task, and in addition examined whether the amount of practice affects the extent to which sequences are sensitive to contextual alterations. It was found that changing contextual cues—but not the removal of such cues—had a detrimental effect on performance. Moreover, this effect was observed only after limited practice, but not after extensive practice. Our findings support the notion of a novel type of context-dependent learning during initial motor skill acquisition and demonstrate that this context-dependence reduces with practice. It is proposed that a gradual development with practice from stimulus-driven to representation-driven sequence execution underlies this practice effect.