Sensorimotor learning during a marksmanship task in immersive virtual reality
Abstract
Sensorimotor learning refers to improvements that occur through practice in the performance
of sensory-guided motor behaviors. Leveraging novel technical capabilities of an immersive
virtual environment, we probed the component kinematic processes that mediate sensorimotor
learning. Twenty naïve subjects performed a simulated marksmanship task modeled after
Olympic Trap Shooting standards. We measured movement kinematics and shooting performance
as participants practiced 350 trials while receiving trial-by-trial feedback about
shooting success. Spatiotemporal analysis of motion tracking elucidated the ballistic
and refinement phases of hand movements. We found systematic changes in movement kinematics
that accompanied improvements in shot accuracy during training, though reaction and
response times did not change over blocks. In particular, we observed longer, slower,
and more precise ballistic movements that replaced effort spent on corrections and
refinement. Collectively, these results leverage developments in immersive virtual
reality technology to quantify and compare the kinematics of movement during early
learning of full body sensorimotor orienting.
Type
Journal articleSubject
Sensorimotor LearningFull-body Orienting
Perception and Action
Immersive Virtual Reality
Marksmanship
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Lawrence Gregory Appelbaum
Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Greg Appelbaum is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and
Behavioral Sciences in the Duke University School of Medicine. Dr. Appelbaum's research
interests primarily concern the brain mechanisms underlying visual cognition, how
these capabilities differ among individuals, and how they can be improved through
behavioral, neurofeedback, and neuromodulation interventions. Within the field of
cognitive neuroscience, his research has addressed visual pe
Ranjana Khanna
Professor of English
Ranjana Khanna is Professor of English, Women's Studies, and the Literature Program
at Duke University. She works on Anglo- and Francophone Postcolonial theory and literature,
and Film, Psychoanalysis, and Feminist theory. She has published widely on transnational
feminism, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial and feminist theory, literature, and film.
She is the author of Dark Continents: Psychoanalysis and Colonialism (Duke University
Press, 2003) and Algeria Cuts: Women and Representation 1830 to
Regis Kopper
Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials
Science
Dr. Regis Kopper is an Adjunct Assistant Research Professor of Mechanical Engineering
and Materials Science at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering and the director of the
Duke immersive Virtual Environment (DiVE). Dr. Kopper has experience in the design
and evaluation of virtual reality systems in the areas of interaction design and modeling,
virtual human interaction and in the evaluation of the benefits of immersive systems.
At Duke, Dr. Kopper investigates how immersive virtual reality t
Nicholas Potter
Adjunct Associate in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery
Marc A. Sommer
Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering
We study circuits for cognition. Using a combination of neurophysiology and biomedical
engineering, we focus on the interaction between brain areas during visual perception,
decision-making, and motor planning. Specific projects include the role of frontal
cortex in metacognition, the role of cerebellar-frontal circuits in action timing,
the neural basis of "good enough" decision-making (satisficing), and the neural mechanisms
of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).
David Zielinski
Analyst, IT
David J. Zielinski is currently a technology specialist for the Duke University OIT
Co-Lab (2021-present). Previously the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies
(2018-2020) and the DiVE Virtual Reality Lab (video) (2004-2018), under the direction
of Regis Kopper (2013-2018), Ryan P. McMahan (2012), and Rachael Brady (2004-2012).
He received his bachelors (2002) and masters (2004) degrees in Computer Science from
the
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