یادگیری حرکتی تعادل پویای دشوار
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Methods
3. Results
4. Discussion
5. Conclusion
Practical implications
Acknowledgements
References
Abstract
Objectives: We wanted to verify if the “learning to learn” effect observed in the learning of visuomotor tasks is also present when learning a balance task, i.e., whether the learning rate of a balance task is improved by prior practice of similar balance tasks. Design: Single centre, parallel group, controlled training study. Methods: 32 young healthy participants were divided into a control and a training group. The training group’s practice consisted of 90 trials of three balance tasks. Forty-eight hours after the training, we recorded performance during the acquisition (90 trials) of a novel balance task in both groups, and 24 h thereafter we measured its retention (10 trials). Results: Mixed models statistical analysis showed that the learning rate of both the acquisition and the retention phase was not influenced by the 90 prior practice trials performed by the training group. However, participants with high lower limb power had a higher balance performance than participants with low power, which can be partly explained by the higher learning rate observed during the acquisition phase for participants with high power. Conclusions: Contrary to visuomotor or perceptual tasks, we did not find a “learning to learn” effect for balance tasks. The correlation between learning rate and lower limb power suggests that motor learning of dynamic balance tasks may depend on the physical capability to execute the correct movement. Thus, a prior strength and conditioning program with emphasis on lower limb power should be considered when designing a balance training, especially in fall prevention.
Introduction
Short-term balance training induces task-specific performance improvement,1–3 and consequently balance should be seen more as a sum of task-specific skills than a general ability.2 Therefore, in regard to fall prevention, which is a major health and resource issue,4,5 patients should learn as many balance tasks as possible, and as close as possible to real-life fall contexts.2 The implementation of this recommendation requires optimization of balance task learning, especially in the setting of clinical rehabilitation where there is limited time to practice. The learning rate of a novel motor task can be improved with previous learning experience of relatively similar tasks.6 This phenomenon has been termed “learning to learn”.7 One of the several possible mechanisms driving this Abbreviations: Pmaxrel, maximal power relative to bodyweight measured during a counter movement jump. ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: louis-solal.giboin@uni-konstanz.de (L.-S. Giboin). effect is called structural learning, where invariants of several tasks sharing the same structure are extracted and facilitate the learning of a new task also sharing the same structure.8 The “learning to learn” effect has been demonstrated for cognitive9–11 and visuomotor tasks,6,12 including a locomotion task relying on distorted visual feedback.13 To our knowledge, this “learning to learn” effect has never been specifically tested for complex full-body tasks such as balance tasks. This learning facilitation would be of interest to reduce the time to learn many different balance tasks. We hypothesized that prior practice of similar balance tasks improves the learning rate of a novel balance task.