The Specificity And/Or Generalizability of Motor Learning: A Scoping Review, a Checklist, and a Framework Forward

Abstract

Humans are constantly faced with learning motor tasks throughout their lifespan (e.g., children learning how to throw a ball overhand, elite athletes learning how to become more even more efficient at their sports performance, and an older adult relearning how to walk post-stroke recovery). With such variety in the types of motor tasks that humans try to learn across the lifespan, little is known about the impact of a learner’s previous motor skill experience. Thus, the purpose of this thesis was to investigate when motor learning generalizability or specificity are more likely to occur, respectively. An in-depth background of motor learning generalizability and specificity was provided in chapter one. The scope of the motor learning literature including generalizability and/or specificity was investigated in chapter two. At the end of chapter two, certain limitations of the motor learning literature are addressed and framed into a useable checklist for future motor learning experiments. Chapter three serves as a bridging chapter to connect the scoping review and checklist in chapter two, to the framework implemented in chapter four. In chapter four, the checklist was employed to assess its usefulness in future motor learning experiments. Collectively, this thesis provides organization to the previous motor learning generalizability and specificity literature, as well as recommendations for future motor learning researchers based on a tested framework protocol.