The Savings in Motor Adaptation: Implications on Sports Training

Abstract

Motor learning, consisting of skill learning and motor adaptation, is one of the most important topics in sports training. However, motor adaptation, investigating how human make quick adjustments in the face of altered conditions, has been largely ignored in coaching. Here in this paper, we reviewed the savings effect in visuomotor rotation, which is the most typical paradigm in motor adaptation, and discussed the implications on sports training. Savings, referring to faster relearning effect, is regarded as an indicator of motor memory and learning transfer. In laboratory studies, researchers find that in many cases, motor adaptation could not be transferred directly across limbs or directions. However, researchers found that by performing an irrelevant task at the to-be transferred condition could eliminate the learning specificity and even achieve complete transfer. The irrelevant task may enhance the control of the new effector or help people get familiar with the new environment. Then, we explored which is necessary for the savings, forming an explicit strategy or experiencing similar errors. By using novel techniques to dissociate the two factors, we conclude that experiencing salient errors is critical for savings to occur. Inspired by these findings, we suggest that in order to increase the extent of learning transfer, some warming-up exercises could be introduced in the to-be transferred condition. Moreover, magnifying the errors between athletes’ and standard movement by taking videos or using VR and AR techniques may be helpful to motor learning.