Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 4
. Comparison of the cerebellar patients and control groups in the visuomotor associa-
tive learning task. Means and standard deviations of (
A
) the number of blocks required to reach
the learning criterion and (
B
) the number of correct associations between numerals and colors
produced after the learning task was concluded. The effects of both variables are significant (
p
< 0.05). Each small bar represents the value of one subject. Adapted with permission from Fig.
3 in Drepper et al. (19).
Subjects had to learn the association between pairs of color squares. To
change the motor demands of the task, subjects had to press a target button once
or three times (one vs. three key presses). If motor execution of the task affected
the ability to learn the association of color pairs, deficits in associative learning
should be more pronounced in the more difficult motor condition.
Association of the color pairs enabled subjects to predict the correct side of
a motor response. Cerebellar patients were less able than controls to learn the
association between pairs of colors and, therefore, less able to reduce reaction
times based on predictive knowledge of the side of the response.
