Résumé
Providing feedback that ‘rewards’ versus ‘punishes’ performance has been shown to lead to different effects on visuomotor adaptation. In this research, we aim to determine the effects of reward and punishment feedback on implicit (i.e., unconscious) contributions to visuomotor adaptation. Participants trained to reach to targets in a virtual reality environment with cursor feedback that was rotated 40˚ clockwise relative to their hand motion. Throughout adaptation blocks, participants in the Reward Group earned points for accurate reaches, while those in the Punishment Group lost points for reaching errors. Adaptation was followed by a washout block, in which participants reached with cursor feedback aligned to hand motion. This was succeeded by an immediate retention block and a second retention block (i.e., 24-hours later), in which rotated cursor feedback was reintroduced. Following each block of trials, participants were asked to reach directly to the target, in the absence of any reaching strategy, to assess implicit adaptation. Participants also indicated their level of task enjoyment. Both experimental groups appeared to enjoy the task to a similar extent, with minimal change in enjoyment after receiving reward or punishment feedback. Preliminary results indicate that the Reward Group demonstrated increased adaptation and retention in comparison to the Punishment Group. That said, implicit adaptation was similar between groups across the experiment. Ongoing data collection aims to investigate the contribution of explicit processes (i.e., conscious strategies) to adaptation and the role explicit processes may play with regard to the learning differences observed between groups.
