Body-Machine Interfaces can restore motion and independence to individuals with movement impairments, but often require extensive time and effort to learn due to complexities in their control scheme. Dyadic practice can help to mitigate this difficulty by allowing the learner to practice the task with a partner. Here, we examined the question of “joint dyadic” practice where the learner practices the task simultaneously with an expert partner, where the control that the expert and learner have over the task could be altered. We collected five groups of participants to explore the effectiveness of various implementations of dyadic practice: one solo group (n = 20) and four dyad groups, in which participants were paired with an expert who had prior practice on the task. In our first study, we explored how observation of one’s partner benefits the learning of a cursor control task by evaluating the solo group, a constant control dyad, in which the novice and the expert shared equal control of the task and were seated in view of one another (n = 16), and a visually-separated dyad, identical to the constant control dyad, except individuals in the dyad were visually separated from their partner (n = 8). In our second study, we explored different methods of allocating control to the learner during dyadic practice by examining a gradual control dyad, in which control of the task was gradually given to the novice as training progresses (n = 12), and an adaptive control dyad, in which control of the task was given to the novice based on their prior performance (n = 12). While all groups were able to learn the task, none of the dyad groups were able to achieve the level of performance reached by the solo group. These findings provide insight on how to structure dyadic practice to encourage learning of a Body-Machine Interface task, as well as how dyadic practice may benefit more complex high degree of freedom tasks.
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