# Which factors influence plan reuse in a sequential posture selection task?

## TL;DR

This study investigates which factors affect the reuse of motor plans in a sequential drawer opening task, finding that only spatial distance influences it.

## Contribution

The study identifies spatial distance as the key factor affecting motor plan reuse, distinguishing it from other potential confounding factors.

## Key findings

- Participants showed a hysteresis effect in all ordered tasks.
- Only an increase in spatial distance significantly reduced the percentage of motor plan reuse.
- Context and global parameters like number of drawers had no significant effect.

## Abstract

In a sequential posture selection task, we reuse former motor plans to reduce cognitive planning cost. The resulting persistence in the former posture, termed motor hysteresis, can serve as a proxy for the percentage of motor plan reuse (PoR). A recent study showed a significant drop in PoR if participants were asked to skip every second drawer in a sequential drawer opening task. In the current study, we sought to disentangle four confounded factors that were potentially responsible for this drop in PoR: a change of (1) spatial distance, (2) digit distance, (3) number of drawers, or (4) context (presence of skipped drawers). To this end, two groups of participants were tested in a series of sequential drawer tasks, where each of the four potential influencing factors was varied independently. PoR was calculated as the dependent variable. Participants displayed a hysteresis effect in all ordered tasks, but the PoR was only reduced by an increase in spatial distance. The three remaining factors had no significant effect. This finding indicates that motor planning is only affected by local (spatial) parameters of the task, but not by context factors (digits, skipped drawers) or global parameters such as the number of drawers.