Muscular Fatigue and Learning a Discrete Motor Skill

Abstract

Abstract A number of theoretical statements of motor learning predict that fatigue should be detrimental to learning, but recent evidence has produced varied results. Some methodological weaknesses of the earlier work were eliminated in the present experiment in which 32 women engaged in 2 min. of arm ergometer cranking followed by the first trial of the discrete sigma task, with cranking interpolated between each of 20 subsequent trials. A control group of 32 subjects engaged in a left-hand tapping task in place of the ergometer cranking. On Day 2 (72 hr. later) all subjects practiced under nonfatigued conditions. The transfer from fatigued to nonfatigued practice was only moderate, indicating that fatigue was a powerful learning variable as predicted by theory.