Enhancing motor skill acquisition with augmented feedback

This chapter provides augmented feedback in such a way that it is likely to enhance learning. Task-intrinsic feedback refers to the sensory feedback that is naturally available while performing a skill. It includes the sights, sounds, smells, and bodily sensations associated with the execution of an action as well as information about the success of a practice attempt, such as whether a ball hit an intended target location. When motor learning is viewed as an error nulling process, augmented feedback can be an indispensable component of the learning process if errors cannot be determined based on task-intrinsic feedback. Although the aforementioned findings provide quite compelling evidence that the role of motivation and perceptions of self-competence in motor learning may have been underestimated historically, some caution is warranted because the beneficial effects of providing false positive feedback have been difficult to replicate.