Emotion and reward are dissociable from error during motor learning

Although emotion is known to reciprocally interact with cognitive and motor performance, contemporary theories of motor learning do not specifically consider how dynamic variations in a learner’s affective state may influence motor performance during motor learning. Using a prism adaptation paradigm, we assessed emotion during motor learning on a trial-by-trial basis. We designed two dart-throwing experiments to dissociate motor performance and reward outcomes by giving participants maximum points for accurate throws and reduced points for throws that hit zones away from the target (i.e., “accidental points”). Experiment 1 dissociated motor performance from emotional responses and found that affective ratings tracked points earned more closely than error magnitude. Further, both reward and error uniquely contributed to motor learning, as indexed by the change in error from one trial to the next. Experiment 2 manipulated accidental point locations vertically, whereas prism displacement remained horizontal. Results demonstrated that reward could bias motor performance even when concurrent sensorimotor adaptation was taking place in a perpendicular direction. Thus, these experiments demonstrate that affective states were dissociable from error magnitude during motor learning and that affect more closely tracked points earned. Our findings further implicate reward as another factor, other than error, that contributes to motor learning, suggesting the importance of incorporating affective states into models of motor learning.