Pupillary Responses during Learning of Suppressed Tracking Tasks

We measured tracking performance in two groups while either the target or the manual cursor was suppressed for a brief period during each trial. We have used this approach to investigate the internal models used during tracking, and their updating during motor learning. We have simultaneously measured tracking performance and pupil dilation as a measure of cognitive load. The results showed that pupil diameter decreases with learning process of tracking performance. Decrease of pupil diameter suggests that automatization is linked specifically to the learning of internal models.