Effects of practice schedule and task specificity on the adaptive process of motor learning

- Motor learning characterizes a process of formation and reorganization of skills.
- Motor skills are hierarchically organised in macro- and microstructures.
- Constant and random practices affect similarly the adaptation to the task goal.
- Effects of constant and random practices are specific to the movement pattern.

This study investigated the effects of practice schedule and task specificity based on the perspective of adaptive process of motor learning. For this purpose, tasks with temporal and force control learning requirements were manipulated in experiments 1 and 2, respectively. Specifically, the task consisted of touching with the dominant hand the three sequential targets with specific movement time or force for each touch. Participants were children (N = 120), both boys and girls, with an average age of 11.2 years (SD = 1.0). The design in both experiments involved four practice groups (constant, random, constant-random, and random-constant) and two phases (stabilisation and adaptation). The dependent variables included measures related to the task goal (accuracy and variability of error of the overall movement and force patterns) and movement pattern (macro- and microstructures). Results revealed a similar error of the overall patterns for all groups in both experiments and that they adapted themselves differently in terms of the macro- and microstructures of movement patterns. The study concludes that the effects of practice schedules on the adaptive process of motor learning were both general and specific to the task. That is, they were general to the task goal performance and specific regarding the movement pattern.