Sensorimotor prediction and memory in object manipulation

When people lift objects of different size but equal weight. they initially employ too much force for the large object and too little force for the sm all object. However, over repeated lifts of the two objects, they learn to suppress the size-weight association used to estimate force requirements an d appropriately scale their lifting forces to the true and equal weights of the objects. Thus, sensorimotor memory from previous lifts comes to domina te visual size information in terms of force prediction. Here we ask whethe r this sensorimotor memory is transient, preserved only long enough to perf orm the task, or more stable. After completing an initial lift series in wh ich they lifted equally weighted large and small objects in alternation, pa rticipants then repeated the lift series after delays of 15 minutes or 24 h ours. In both cases, participants retained information about the weights of the objects and used this information to predict the appropriate fingertip forces. This preserved sensorimotor memory suggests that participants acqu ired internal models of the size-weight stimuli that could be used for late r prediction.