The effects of visual cues in an immersive virtual reality environment on adaptation to internal and external errors

When performing motor tasks, we improve performance by modifying future movements to correct for observed errors. The assigned source of the errors can affect many aspects of adaptation including its generalizability and the updating of internal models. Adaptation to errors assigned to internal sources (e.g., our arm) is often specific to the arm and are poorly generalized when acting with a different effector. Adaptation to errors assigned to external sources (e.g., the environment) on the other hand, is agnostic to the effector being used but may be specific to the environment. Since the cause of an error is often ambiguous, sensory cues can be used to estimate the likely source of the error. We developed a task in which motor errors could be assigned to internal or external sources. Participants made arm movements to roll a ball toward targets in a head-mounted virtual reality environment. We induced errors by either modifying the mapping between the arm movement and the initial movement of the ball, or by applying a change in the ball path only after the release of the ball. Additionally, we used informative visual cues to signal changes in the environment to increase external error attribution. Pilot data show visual cues can facilitate the assignment of errors to external sources. The visual cues can be dynamics of the ball movement or global environmental changes. External error attribution can in turn allow for rapid switching between motor memories.