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Published online: 7 November 2012
© Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2012
Abstract It is generally accepted that augmented feedback, provided by a human expert or a technical display, effectively enhances motor learning. However, discussion of the way to most effectively provide augmented feedback has been controversial. Related studies have focused primarily on simple or artificial tasks enhanced by visual feedback. Recently, technical advances have made it possible also to investigate more complex, realistic motor tasks and to implement not only visual, but also auditory, haptic, or multimodal augmented feedback. The aim of this review is to address the potential of augmented unimodal and multimodal feedback in the framework of motor learning theories. The review addresses the reasons for the different impacts of feedback strategies within or between the visual, auditory, and haptic modalities and the challenges that need to be overcome to provide appropriate feedback in these modalities, either in isolation or in combination. Accordingly, the design criteria for successful visual, auditory, haptic, and multimodal feedback are elaborated.
Keywords Skill learning and automaticity . Augmented extrinsic feedback . Unimodal feedback . Feedback strategy
Introduction
In the field of sports, trainers want their athletes to jump higher or run faster-in general, to perform motor tasks better. In rehabilitation, therapists want their patients to recover lost motor functions as quickly and permanently as possible. The aim of research in motor learning is to enhance these examples of complex motor (re-)learning by optimizing instructions and feedback. Depending on the motor feature to be learned, trainers and therapists switch modalities to instruct the motor task; for instance, instead of visually demonstrating the movement, they move the athlete or patient through it. Technical displays, which have become increasingly common for providing augmented feedback, can also address different modalities: vision (screens, head-mounted displays), hearing (speakers, headphones), haptics (robots, vibrotactile actuators), or a combination of them.
Feedback strategies may also be classified according to the point in time at which feedback is provided: either during motor task execution (i.e., concurrent [online, realtime] feedback) or after it (i.e., terminal feedback). Recently, the benefits of concurrent, as compared with terminal, feedback strategies have been controversially discussed. Literature related to this controversy is the basis of this review; we elaborate the potential and the limitations...