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One of the brain's primary functions is to promote actions in dynamic, distracting environments. Because distractions divert attention from our primary goals, we must learn to maintain accurate actions under sensory and cognitive distractions. Visuomotor adaptation is a learning process that restores performance when sensorimotor capacities or environmental conditions are abruptly or gradually altered. Prior work showed that learning to counteract an abrupt perturbation under a particular single- or dual-task setting (i.e., attentional context) was associated with better recall under the same conditions. This suggested that the attentional context was encoded during adaptation and used as a recall cue. The current study investigated whether the attentional context (i.e., single vs. dual task) also affected adaptation and recall to a gradual perturbation, which limited awareness of movement errors. During adaptation, participants moved a cursor to a target while learning to counteract a visuomotor rotation that increased from 0° to 45° by 0.3° each trial, with or without performing a secondary task. Relearning was impaired when the attentional context was different between adaptation and recall ( |
