Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

My goal is to understand how we can facilitate the acquisition of motor skills and to learn more about the mechanisms of long term retention of motor skills. That is, after we have learned a skill, what are the factors that influence the forgetting of that skill - are they the same factors that influence how quickly a skill is learned? Is the forgetting curve similar to the learning curve? The majority of our understanding of skill retention has focused on the short term (i.e., hours, days or weeks after initial practice). However, in everyday life we learn skills that are performed over a lifetime. The obvious example is riding a bike, but other examples include the physician who is certified to perform a particular clinical skill. If a long period goes by without practice, is the physician still competent? Does over learning prevent or slow down the forgetting? The role of touch feedback during these processes of learning and forgetting will be addressed. More specifically, the role of touch or haptics in guidance will be examined both during acquisition and long-term retention (months and even years after initial acquisition). A behavioural approach will be used where the outcome, or process of making upper limb movements, will be measured as human participants learn to perform various skilled movements under the above-mentioned training conditions. The skills studied will include tasks of varying complexity ranging from simple laboratory skills to very complex technical clinical skills such as suturing or performing a colonoscopy. Studying this range of skill complexity allows the generalizability of models of motor learning to be addressed. This work will contribute to our theoretical understanding of the processes of motor learning and forgetting. However, this research also has practical application. Our findings have implications for many environments where motor skills are performed (e.g., work or industrial environments, health care, military, rehabilitation, sports, music) and could potentially save training dollars, increase productivity, and improve safety.