Haschke, M. (Markus) (2019) Does using more joint-angles make people learn faster? Effects of constraining redundancy. thesis, Human Movement Sciences.
Full text available on request.Abstract
Movement variability at the joint level can be twofold. There are variable joint-angle combinations that affect the movement outcome (task-relevant variability in joint-angles) and do not affect the movement outcome (task-irrelevant variability). Whereas recent studies tested how these two types of variability relate to motor learning, none have manipulated the number of joints involved in movement control. Since the number of joints (i.e. the extent of redundancy) should theoretically affect joint-angle variability and therefore motor learning, we investigated how constraining joint redundancy affects motor learning rates. Therefore, thirteen participants performed reaching movements over one experimental session. First, baseline variability was obtained. During the training session, participants were perturbed by attaching a weight to their forearm to change reaching kinematics. Participants in the experimental condition were restricted in wrist movement through a wrist brace, participants in the control condition were not. All participants performed 6 blocks of 30 reaching during training. We compared motor learning rates between the experimental and the control group while controlling for baseline variability as well as correlated baseline variability with motor learning rates. We hypothesized a positive relationship between baseline variability and motor learning rates. Also, we hypothesized that participants that could use more joints (control group) would learn faster, and that this effect interacted with baseline variability. The results disconfirmed all hypothesized effects, possibly because our experimental manipulation did not effectively change joint-angle coordinative patterns between groups. Future studies should employ different experimental manipulations to investigate the relationship between joint redundancy and motor learning. Keywords: joint redundancy, exploration, motor learning
| Item Type: | Thesis (UNSPECIFIED) |
|---|---|
| Supervisor name: | Bongers, dr. R.M. |
| Faculty: | Medical Sciences |
| Date Deposited: | 23 May 2022 08:13 |
| Last Modified: | 23 May 2022 08:13 |
| URI: | https://umcg.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/3410 |
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