Implicit and Explicit Contributions to Motor Skill

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A commonly-appreciated characteristic of motor skill learning is that muchof it occurs outside of awareness. Particularly at high levels of skill,we seem not to be able to articulate the exact movements that make upperformance. On the other hand, conscious strategies are clearly importantin motor skill learning; consciously understood strategies are at theheart of coaching and instruction.A considerable amount of research has been directed at demonstrating that theconscious (or explicit) and unconscious (or implicit) parts of motor skilllearning are supported by different structures in the brain; thus theemphasis has been on the separability of these two components of learning.Less work has been directed at understanding how these two forms ofknowledge work together. The goal of this project is to examine therelationship of implicit and explicit knowledge in motor skill learning.The experiments are motivated by a model of motor skill learning thatproposes specific mechanisms by which both implicit and explicit knowledgecontribute to motor skill learning. There are three aims of the project:Aim 1: What is the representation underlying sequence learning? Many motorskills involve learning a sequence (e.g., the notes of a piano sonata).When one learns a motor sequence, what is it a sequence of? Stimuluspositions? Response locations? Muscle movements? I will utilize transferdesigns to determine the representation underlying implicit and explicitsequence learning. Aim 2: What is the time course of implicit and explicit learning? Someformal models of motor skill learning suggest that implicit knowledge iscompiled from explicit representations. Behavioral experiments suggestthat explicit and implicit knowledge can be acquired in parallel, whereasbrain imaging work suggests that only one type of representation can beacquired at one time. This project will address this question directly. Aim 3: What is the mechanism by which explicit and implicit knowledgeinteract? This project examines the possibility that explicit knowledgecan support performance on an implicit task if three conditions are met:the subject knows that he or she has applicable explicit knowledge,sufficient attentional resources are available, and the explicitrepresentation is specific in terms of the spatial targets for movement.These experiments will further our knowledge about the normal operation ofmotor skill learning, and have particular relevance to athletics, and toskill learning in industrial situations.