Previous studies of physical guidance (PG - physically constraining error during practice of a motor task) have found it to be ineffective in enhancing motor learning. However, most studies have used a highly constraining form of physical guidance that may have encouraged undue dependency. In addition, previous research has not fully considered the interaction between visual feedback and PG, and many of the studies have failed to use standard delayed retention tests with knowledge of results unavailable (no-KR). The current experiment examine the effects of varying levels of constraint in PG, as well as the interaction of PG and visual guidance (VG), using no-KR retention tests. This study involved 99 subjects divided into nine acquisition trial condition groups, forming from a 3 x 3 factorial design with factors of PG x VG, each presented at levels designated as tight, bandwidth, or none. Subjects undertook a two-dimensional pattern drawing task with no KR, PG, or VG as a pre-test, before completing 100 practice trials under one of the nine conditions. The same test was given as a retention test (immediately after practice) and as a delayed retention test (two days later). A transfer test, using a different pattern, was also administered on the second day. Almost all groups performed better on the immediate transfer test than they had on the pre-test. However, after two days only three groups (PG bandwidth-VG tight, PG none-VG bandwidth, and PG none-VG none) retained this improvement and only two groups (PG bandwidth-VG bandwidth and PG none-VG none) performed significantly better on the transfer task than their pre-test. It is proposed that bandwidth guidance generally promotes learning and that bandwidth physical guidance may enhance proprioceptive cues. Independent of PG and VG effects, KR (an overall error score) also facilitated learning.

<p dir="ltr">Many tasks require processing, filtering, and responding to information from multiple sensory modalities. Crossmodal interactions are common and visual dominance often arises with incongruent sensory information. Past studies have shown that visual dominance tends to be strong in spatial tasks. Experiments in a crossmodal attention switching paradigm with physical-spatial stimuli (e.g., stimuli in left and right locations) have demonstrated a robust visual dominance congruence pattern with conflicting visual-spatial information impairing responses to auditory-spatial stimuli, but conflicting auditory-spatial information having less impact on visual-spatial processing. Strikingly, this pattern does not occur with verbal-spatial stimuli (e.g., the words LEFT and RIGHT as stimuli). In the present study, experiments were conducted to systematically examine the occurrence and underlying basis of this distinction. Participants were presented with either verbal-spatial or physical-spatial stimuli, simultaneously in the visual and auditory modalities, and were to selectively attend and respond to the location of the cued modality. An initial experiment replicated previously reported effects, with similar patterns of crossmodal congruence effects for visual and auditory verbal-spatial stimuli. Three further experiments directly compared crossmodal congruence patterns for physical-spatial and verbal-spatial stimuli across varying attentional conditions. Intermixing verbal and physical spatial stimulus sets did not meaningfully alter the distinct congruence patterns compared to when the sets were blocked, and biasing attention to verbal-spatial processing amplified the modality-congruence interaction for physical-spatial stimuli. Together, the consistent findings of the modality-congruence interaction showing visual dominance for physical-spatial stimuli but not for verbal-spatial stimuli suggests that the effect is driven by the particular spatial sets based on their sensory properties rather than endogenous attentional mechanisms.</p>