Reduction in Learning Rates Associated with Anterograde Interference Results from Interactions between Different Timescales in Motor Adaptation
Figure 3
Schematic of anterograde interference metric.
A: A cartoon example of a learning curve in an AB learning paradigm, where Task A (green background) is learned prior to Task B (yellow background). The dashed line represents the portion of the learning curve during Task B after the baseline performance level is achieved. Note that in this cartoon example, opposite-learning proceeds more slowly than the initial learning because of the previous exposure to Task A. We define this slowing as anterograde interference. B: To quantify the extent to which anterograde interference slows adaptation to Task B, we compute the percent reduction between the initial learning curve for Task A (solid red line) and the rectified (flipped) opposite-learning curve for Task B starting from when the adaptation achieves baseline levels (dashed red line) over the first 25 trials of these learning curves. This analysis specifically evaluates the reduction in learning rate rather than higher initial errors, because in the comparison both learning curves start from the same overall performance level.