Motor Skills Laboratory

Title: The role of observed errors in performing and learning motor skillsMy committee is:
Committee members: Dr Nicola Hodges, Dr. Romeo Chua and Dr. Sarah Kraeutner

When/Where: April 26th at 1pm in room 300 WMG

Abstract: Committing and correcting errors are critical components of motor skill learning. Yet, it is unclear if and how seeing someone else make a mistake impacts subsequent attempts at the task and how these processes can be leveraged for observational learning. The overall purpose of my proposed doctoral dissertation is to investigate the processes underlying the observation of errors and how they influence motor control and learning in novice and experienced performers. I will first show experienced golfers videos of putting errors to replicate and extend novel effects, where observers showed biases towards or away from observed errors, depending on task instructions (Experiment 1). These compensatory biases are thought to occur through prediction errors (differences between expected and actual performance) driving changes to the observer’s internal model, biasing subsequent performance attempts. Because task error (success or failure) is consistently confounded with the presence of prediction error, it is of interest to test if these two sources of error drive biases independently or interactively (Experiment 2). If these contagious biases from observation occur in the golf putting task, I will then use an adaptive observation paradigm to test how these implicit biases can be leveraged for learning (Experiment 3). If I am unable to replicate the expected biases in Experiments 1 and 2, I will instead test the informational value of seeing errors in an observational learning paradigm (Experiment 4).  Together, these studies have theoretical importance in understanding the processes involved during the observation of others and practical relevance for their use in observational learning paradigms.