Elsevier

Current Opinion in Psychology

Volume 29, October 2019, Pages 261-265
Current Opinion in Psychology

The role of attention in motor control and learning

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.08.002Get rights and content

Performing and learning motor behaviors are fundamental to everyday life. The relations between perceptual input and motor output have been studied and are well understood for simple experimental settings. Recent findings, however, suggest that motor actions also critically depend on cognitive factors; these influences are most notable in complex environments that place high demands on attention and memory. In this review, the role of various aspects of attention in motor control is discussed, focusing on the following points: (1) recent findings concerning interactions between attentional resources and motor skill acquisition, (2) the consistency of attentional states (divided versus focused) and motor memory retrieval, and (3) the locus of attention (internal versus external) and motor performance. These findings collectively highlight the interplay between attention and motor systems, which in turn has practical implications for developing and improving motor training and rehabilitation programs.

Section snippets

Attentional demand on acquisition of motor skills

To learn a new motor skill like a tennis serve, we monitor performance to detect and evaluate movement errors, and also identify key transformations that map sensory experience to update internal models for future use [9]. In such a setting, attention is commonly viewed as a necessary capacity-limited resource that facilitates multiple cognitive functions and resolves competition between these processes [10, 11, 12]. To investigate whether and how attentional demands influence motor skill

Attentional states for motor memory

The studies mentioned thus far demonstrate how allocating attentional resource to a concurrent task interferes with sequence learning, sensorimotor adaptation, and force-field learning [13, 14, 15, 16, 17]; however, these previous studies focused mainly on how divided attention impairs immediate motor performance, thereby not considering how it affects memory formation and retrieval. According to recent work [23,24,25,26], the success of motor memory retrieval depends on whether participants

Attentional focus and performance outcomes

In addition to considering whether and how to divide attention among several activities, we often need to decide where to engage our attention during motor performance. An intriguing question remains regarding how attentional focus affects movement and performance outcomes: is it better to focus attention on our own movements (i.e. internal focus) or on the effects our movements have on the environment (i.e. external focus)? Here, we discuss practical implications of the locus of attention for

Concluding remarks

Here, we reviewed recent progress made to understand the relation between attention, motor performance, and learning, as well as how these factors affect the success of current performance and the development of long-term motor skills. These findings also highlight important practical implications for designing motor learning programs to be more efficient and generalizable to dynamic, real-world settings. This has direct applications for training drivers, pilots, and athletes, as well as the

Conflict of interest statement

Nothing declared.

References and recommended reading

Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review, have been highlighted as:

  • • of special interest

  • •• of outstanding interest

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER BCS-1555006 to J.H.S. We thank Dr. J.D McCarthy for helpful discussion.

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