The effect of movement frequency on perceptual-motor learning of a novel bimanual coordination pattern.

The most widely known studies of rhythmic limb coordination showed that frequency strongly affects the stability of some coordinations (e.g. 180° relative phase) but not others (e.

Training 90° bimanual coordination at high frequency yields dependence on kinesthetic information and poor performance of dyadic unimanual coordination.

Two groups of participants were trained to be proficient at performing bimanual 90° coordination either at a high (2.5 Hz) or low (0.5 Hz) frequency with both kinesthetic and visual information available.

Using visual and/or kinesthetic information to stabilize intrinsic bimanual coordination patterns is a function of movement frequency.

Coordination dynamics suggest that both in-phase and anti-phase movements are intrinsic and can be readily performed without practice. As movement frequency increases, individuals performing anti-phase movement inevitably switch to perform in-phase movement. However, due to different frames of reference used to define intrinsic coordination patterns in visual and kinesthetic domains, the perception of intrinsic coordination patterns could be ambiguous, which leads to the question whether the visually or kinesthetically perceived information is used to maintain the intrinsic coordination patterns.

Advantage of Early Focus on Visual Information in Bi-Modal Training of Bimanual Coordination.

Previous studies have shown that learning bimanual coordination is modality-specific, and both visual and kinesthetic information about relative phase can be used to facilitate learning. However, an extended training with focus on visual information leads to the neglect of kinesthesis and a complete reliance on vision to perform the coordination. The current study explored the bi-modal training of bimanual coordination, where the participants were guided to attend to both visual and kinesthetic information to learn 90° coordination.

When kinesthetic information is neglected in learning a Novel bimanual rhythmic coordination.

Many studies have shown that rhythmic interlimb coordination involves perception of the coupled limb movements, and different sensory modalities can be used. Using visual displays to inform the coupled bimanual movement, novel bimanual coordination patterns can be learned with practice. A recent study showed that similar learning occurred without vision when a coach provided manual guidance during practice.

The 50s cliff: a decline in perceptuo-motor learning, not a deficit in visual motion perception.

Previously, we measured perceptuo-motor learning rates across the lifespan and found a sudden drop in learning rates between ages 50 and 60, called the "50s cliff." The task was a unimanual visual rhythmic coordination task in which participants used a joystick to oscillate one dot in a display in coordination with another dot oscillated by a computer. Participants learned to produce a coordination with a 90° relative phase relation between the dots.