Signatures of short-term and long-term strategies for visuomotor adaptation

Publication Year
2026

Type

Journal Article
Abstract

Cognitive strategies are essential for visuomotor adaptation. Task set size (the number of targets) often determines which strategy is engaged: working memory (WM) is sufficient for small set size, but its capacity is often limited for more complex tasks. These WM limitations may be bypassed by retrieving a strategy from  long-term motor memory (LTM), but the required repetition is unknown. To address this, participants were trained on a single target–rotation pair, establishing an LTM visuomotor solution, after which we probed LTM-based retrieval across set sizes by comparing it with WM. The results indicated that LTM-based retrieval was relatively automatic and largely insensitive to set size, whereas WM-based retrieval declined as set size increased. Initial practice of just 10 or 30 trials produced similarly robust LTM for a strategy, which outperformed strategies held in WM. Model-based analyses suggested a trend toward higher LTM precision at larger set sizes, consistent with dynamic interactions between WM and LTM. 

Journal
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
Start Page
4968
Pages
4968-4975
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