We review three lines of recent research at an intersection of motor learning and sport psychology as they relate to motor skill acquisition: enhanced expectancies, autonomy support, and external attentional focus. Findings within these lines of research have been integrated into a new theory, the OPTIMAL (Optimizing Performance through Intrinsic Motivation and Attention for Learning) theory (i...

Motor skill is usually understood as a capability to perform faster and more accurate movements than other, unskilled, individuals. In this study we investigated motor skill learning using a path tracking task, where subjects had to track various curved paths as fast as possible, in the absence of any external perturbations. We found that subjects become better with practice, producing faster a...

Lateral striatal neurons that fire phasically in relation to active movement of the contralateral forelimb (determined via daily sensorimotor examination) were studied during acquisition of cued lever pressing. Rats were trained to lift the contralateral forepaw from the floor to press a lever in the presence of a tone. The tone was presented 70 times per day (session) for 18 consecutive days. ...

Behavioural variability is likely to emerge when a particular task is performed in different cultural settings, assuming that part of human motor behaviour is influenced by culture. In analysing motor behaviour it is useful to distinguish how the action is performed from the result achieved. Does cultural environment lead to specific cultural motor skills? Are there differences between cultures...

Motor skill acquisition inherently depends on the way one practices the motor task. The amount of motor task variability during practice has been shown to foster transfer of the learned skill to other similar motor tasks. In addition, variability in a learning schedule, in which a task and its variations are interweaved during practice, has been shown to help the transfer of learning in motor s...

The improvement of a perceptual or motor skill continues after training has ended. The central question is whether this improvement is just a function of time or whether sleep, a certain circadian phase, or their interaction (sleep occurring in a particular circadian phase) is favorable to the reprocessing of recent memory traces. In this issue of Neuron, provide behavioral evidence that most o...

Factors that affect boat speed are important determinants of rowing performance and should form the basis of feedback to rowers and their coaches. Biomechanical analysis of rowing has led to variables that are causally linked to boat speed. With modern technology, these variables can be measured and feedback can be presented instantaneously on-water, or be presented simultaneously with video af...

Extensive practice is associated with a higher level of learning than practice until performance stabilization. This is partially attributable to the changes in the variability of the structure that control the motor skill that occur during practice. However, because both conditions result in performance stabilization, the error in the task performance does not decrease further, and it is neces...

Prior research has shown that infants learn statistical regularities in action sequences better than they learn non-action event sequences. This is consistent with current theories claiming that the same mechanism guides action observation and action execution. The current eye-tracking study tested the prediction, based on these theories, that infants' ability to learn statistical regularities ...

When teaching a complex sequence, the sequence is often chunked into components; however, this strategy may not always benefit learning, but may be detrimental. The hypothesis is that this occurs because chunking deprives learners of compound cues that could aid recall. To test this, participants learned 9-item movement sequences, either as three 3-item chunks or as one 9-item series. To underm...