Tactile Feedback Involving Actual Operation for Motor Skill Learning

Traditionally, physical skill acquisition has been aimed at replicating an expert’s movement. However, mere imitations of expert movements may yield different results owing to the differences in the bodies of the expert and learner. Hence, in this study, we focused on sensory feedback to develop a skill-learning method. By presenting the tactile information of the expert’s and learner’s fingers at different body locations, utilizing tactile information in real time while performing tasks was feasible. Our system had two functions: body movement in Expert mode and self-feedback in User mode. We aimed to clarify the learning effects of these functions. The experiment comprised a task of imitating writing skills and manipulated two variables: with/without motion in Expert mode (Motion/No-Motion condition) and with/without self-feedback in User mode (With-Feedback/Without-Feedback condition). We compared the learning effects under the four different conditions. We found that the Expert mode involving the actual operation had a positive impact on acquiring proficiency with writing force. The self-feedback in the User mode was minimized the inter-participant variability in the learning.