Sequential motor learning transfers from real to virtual environment.
Yuhi Takeo, Masayuki Hara, Yuna Shirakawa and 2 others
PMID 34193177WHAT IT FOUND
Practising a button-press task in the real world made a subsequent virtual reaching task faster.
The reverse did not happen. Practising the virtual task first did not improve performance on the real-world task.
Key findings
01Response times during the virtual reaching task were significantly faster in the group that had just completed the real-world button-press task, but only at the final stage of the sequence.
02Response times during the real-world button-press task were not affected by whether the participant had previously completed the virtual reaching task.
03Participants' subjective sense of ownership and control over the virtual hand did not differ between the groups.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study used only healthy young adults, so the results may not apply to patients with neurological conditions or older adults. The virtual task lacked tactile feedback, which may have hindered learning in the virtual-to-real direction. Only response time was measured; accuracy and movement quality were not reported as primary outcomes. The study did not measure long-term retention, so it is unclear if the transfer effect persists beyond the immediate session. Wearing a head-mounted display in the virtual condition but not the real condition introduced an environmental difference that could affect performance.
Declared interests
None declared. Funding was from non-US government sources.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that virtual reality training is inferior to real-world training. The study shows that transfer is one-way in this specific setup. It does not mean VR is ineffective for learning, only that prior real-world practice helped the VR task, while prior VR practice did not help the real-world task.