# The effects of declarative learning on early and late motor skill learning

## TL;DR

This study explores how declarative learning affects motor skill learning at different stages of training.

## Contribution

The study introduces new insights into how intervening declarative tasks impact motor performance depending on when they are introduced.

## Key findings

- Intervening declarative tasks late in training did not affect motor performance.
- Early declarative tasks transiently impaired motor performance but were not linked to task performance.
- The findings suggest timing matters in how declarative and motor systems interact.

## Abstract

Motor skill learning and performance is driven by the interplay between declarative and nondeclarative systems, which can complement or interfere with one another depending on task demands. In this study, we investigated whether an intervening declarative cued-recall task impairs motor skill performance in a finger-tapping-task and assessed three hypotheses: the consolidation disruption hypothesis, the shared resource hypothesis, and the breakdown of inhibition hypothesis. Intervening declarative tasks placed late in training failed to affect motor performance. In contrast, when introduced early in training (Experiment 3), motor performance appears to have been transiently impaired. Despite this impairment, there was no association between the intervening declarative task performance and motor impairment. We discuss the ramifications of these findings with regard to other motor skill tasks and intervening declarative tasks.