A MENTAL ROUTE TO MOTOR LEARNING - IMPROVING TRAJECTORIAL KINEMATICS THROUGH IMAGERY TRAINING

There are contrasting reports upon the level of effectiveness of motor imagery in learning new motor skills, but there is general consensus that motor imagery can lead to improvements in performance, especially in combination with physical practice. In the present study we examin ed the effectiveness of motor imagery in the acquisition of movement i nvariants in two grapho-motor trajectorial learning tasks with differi ng visuospatial components: 'Ideogram drawing' and ''connecting circle s'. Two subject groups were studied: An imagery group, which underwent 10 min of motor imagery training and a control group, which practised a control visuomotor task over the same period of time. The results s howed that imagery training alone enabled the subjects to achieve a si gnificant approach to movement isochrony as well as a significant shif ting of peak velocity toward the target. After a practice phase, both groups improved their performance, but the imagery group was still sig nificantly faster than the control group. Furthermore, a series of tes ts measuring visual imagery abilities was administered to the subjects . There were however no significant relationships between the motor pe rformance and the visual imagery ability levels of the subjects. It is concluded that motel-imagery can improve the acquisition of the spati o-temporal patterns of grapho-motor trajectories and that there are di fferent processes involved in visual and motor imagery. (C) 1998 Elsev ier Science B.V.