Recent research on bilateral transfer suggests that imagery training can facilitate the transfer of motor skill from a trained limb to that of an untrained limb above and beyond that of physical practice. To further explore this effect, the present study examined the influence of practice duration and task difficulty on the extent to which imagery training and physical training influences bilat...

We analyzed the relationship between goal achievement and execution variability in craftsmen who have acquired the highest "ultimate" skills of stone knapping. The goal of a knapping movement is defined as the vector of the final velocity of a hammer, crucial for detaching a flake and, consequently, for the shape of the final product. The execution of the movement is defined by the kinematic pa...

objectives: the objective of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the ‘physical well-being, health and motor development inventory’ used to assess school readiness in ordinary and mentally retarded pre-school children. methods: a descriptive study examining validity was conducted using random sampling. two hundred students (160 ordinary and 40 mentally retarded children) wer...

While professional quarterbacks like Peyton Manning make passing a football look effortless, it takes a lifetime of disciplined practice for these elite athletes to reach such a high level of skill. The principal responsibility of the quarterback in American football is to throw a forward pass to his teammate. This skill, however, is not as trivial as it may appear. To achieve a successful pass...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential long-term association of motor skill proficiency at 6 years of age and self-reported physical activity (PA) at age 26. Direct motor performance data were collected in 1991 with a follow-up study occurring in 1996, and then indirect questionnaires (self-report) administered in 2001 and 2011. In 2011, 17 participants who were identified a...

Motor cortex (M1) activity between postnatal weeks 5 and 7 is essential for normal development of the corticospinal tract (CST) and visually guided movements. Unilateral reversible inactivation of M1, by intracortical muscimol infusion, during this period permanently impairs development of the normal dorsoventral distribution of CST terminations and visually guided motor skills. These impairmen...

Emerging evidence suggests that sleep plays a key role in procedural learning, particularly in the continued development of motor skill learning following initial acquisition. We argue that a detailed examination of the time course of performance across sleep on the finger-tapping task, established as the paradigm for studying the effect of sleep on motor learning, will help distinguish a resto...

It is no secret that motor learning benefits from repetition. For example, pianists devote countless hours to performing complicated sequences of key presses, and golfers practice their swings thousands of times to reach a level of proficiency. Interestingly, the subsequent waking and sleeping hours after practice also play important roles in motor learning. During this time, a motor skill can ...

Real-time sonification of human movement (conversion of motion signals into sound) can be used as augmented feedback for motor skill learning. With sonification, motor skills can, in some instances, be learned more quickly and successfully (Sigrist et al., 2013a). The goal of such sonification systems is a permanent (or at least, lasting) improvement in performance at a physical task or skill, ...

This study sought evidence of observational motor learning, a type of learning in which observation of the skilled performance of another person not only facilitates motor skill acquisition but does so by contributing to the formation of effector-specific motor representations. Previous research has indicated that observation of skilled performance engages cognitive processes similar to those o...