Abstract
Motor skill memory is first encoded online in a fragile form during practice and then converted into a stable form by offline consolidation, which is the behavioral stage critical for successful learning. Praise, a social reward, is thought to boost motor skill learning by increasing motivation, which leads to increased practice. However, the effect of praise on consolidation is unknown. Here, we tested the hypothesis that praise following motor training directly facilitates skill consolidation. Forty-eight healthy participants were trained on a sequential finger-tapping task. Immediately after training, participants were divided into three groups according to whether they received praise for their own training performance, praise for another participant's performance, or no praise. Participants who received praise for their own performance showed a significantly higher rate of offline improvement relative to other participants when performing a surprise recall test of the learned sequence. On the other hand, the average performance of the novel sequence and randomly-ordered tapping did not differ between the three experimental groups. These results are the first to indicate that praise-related improvements in motor skill memory are not due to a feedback-incentive mechanism, but instead involve direct effects on the offline consolidation process.
Highlights
Praise is the positive evaluation of another’s products, performance, or attributes, where the evaluator presumes the validity of the standards on which the evaluation is based [1]
The purpose of this study was to investigate whether praise following motor training enhances skill consolidation
Our data indicated that praise following motor training enhances consolidation of the learned sequence since the rate of offline improvement was significantly greater in the Self group than in the Other or No-praise groups
Summary
Praise is the positive evaluation of another’s products, performance, or attributes, where the evaluator presumes the validity of the standards on which the evaluation is based [1]. For example, praise is hypothesized to provide feedback about the level of participant competence [8], which serves as an incentive to enhance practice efforts [9]. Praise accelerates motor skill performance by enhancing motivation [8,10,11]. This is reasonable because motor skills are initially acquired by repeatedly performing an action during practice. We hypothesize that praise influences the skill consolidation process directly, as opposed to indirectly through motivating further practice
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