Transfer of motor skill between virtual reality viewed using a head-mounted display and conventional screen environments.
Julia M Juliano, Sook-Lei Liew
PMID 32276664WHAT IT FOUND
Healthy adults learned a pinch task equally well on a headset or a screen, but skill transfer was asymmetric.
Training on a screen improved performance when moving to the headset, while training on the headset led to decreased performance on the screen.
Key findings
01Participants trained on a conventional computer screen showed increased motor skill when tested in the head-mounted display virtual environment.
02Participants trained in the head-mounted display virtual environment showed decreased motor skill when tested on the conventional computer screen.
03Age, gender, video game use, and interface quality significantly predicted how well screen-trained skills transferred to the headset.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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 healthy young adults, so results may not apply to clinical populations with motor or cognitive impairments. The transfer was tested between a headset and a computer screen, not to real-world physical tasks like throwing a ball or grasping objects. The study measured transfer of motor skill acquisition, not long-term motor skill learning or retention. The model predicting transfer from the headset to the screen was not statistically significant, so personal factors did not clearly explain the performance drop in that direction.
Declared interests
The authors declared no competing interests. The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that virtual reality is ineffective for motor learning. The study showed that participants learned the task just as well in the headset as on the screen. The issue identified is specifically with the asymmetrical transfer of that skill between the immersive and non-immersive environments, not with the acquisition of the skill itself.