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Studies of self-controlled practice have shown benefits when learners controlled feedback schedule, use of assistive devices and task difficulty, with benefits attributed to information processing and motivational advantages of self-control. Although haptic assistance serves as feedback, aids task performance and modifies task difficulty, researchers have yet to explore whether self-control over haptic assistance could be beneficial for learning. We explored whether self-control of haptic assistance would be beneficial for learning a tracing task. Self-controlled participants selected practice blocks on which they would receive haptic assistance, while participants in a yoked group received haptic assistance on blocks determined by a matched self-controlled participant. We inferred learning from performance on retention tests without haptic assistance. From qualitative analysis of open-ended questions related to rationales for/experiences of the haptic assistance that was chosen/provided, themes emerged regarding participants’ views of the utility of haptic assistance for performance and learning. Results showed that learning was directly impacted by the frequency of haptic assistance for self-controlled participants only and view of haptic assistance. Furthermore, self-controlled participants’ views were significantly associated with their requested haptic assistance frequency. We discuss these findings as further support for the beneficial role of self-controlled practice for motor learning.

Researchers in the domain of haptic training are now entering the long-standing debate regarding whether or not it is best to learn a skill by experiencing errors. Haptic training paradigms provide fertile ground for exploring how various theories about feedback, errors and physical guidance intersect during motor learning. Our objective was to determine how error minimizing, error augmenting and no haptic feedback while learning a self-paced curve-tracing task impact performance on delayed (1 day) retention and transfer tests, which indicate learning. We assessed performance using movement time and tracing error to calculate a measure of overall performance -- the speed accuracy cost function. Our results showed that despite exhibiting the worst performance during skill acquisition, the error augmentation group had significantly better accuracy (but not overall performance) than the error minimization group on delayed retention and transfer tests. The control group's performance fell between that of the two experimental groups but was not significantly different from either on the delayed retention test. We propose that the nature of the task (requiring online feedback to guide performance) coupled with the error augmentation group's frequent off-target experience and rich experience of error-correction promoted information processing related to error-detection and error-correction that are essential for motor learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]