The planning horizon for movement sequences

Abstract

When performing a long chain of actions in rapid sequence, future movements need to be planned concurrently with ongoing action. However, how far ahead we plan, and whether this ability improves with practice, is currently unknown. Here we designed an experiment in which healthy volunteers produced sequences of 14 finger presses quickly and accurately on a keyboard in response to numerical stimuli. On every trial, participants were only shown a fixed number of stimuli ahead of the current keypress. The size of this viewing window varied between 1 (next digit revealed with the pressing of the current key) and 14 (full view of the sequence). Participants practiced the task for five days and their performance was continuously assessed on random sequences. Our results indicate that participants used the available visual information to plan multiple actions into the future, but that the planning horizon was limited: receiving information about more than 3 movements ahead did not result in faster sequence production. Over the course of practice, we found larger performance improvements for larger viewing windows and an expansion of the planning horizon. These findings suggest that the ability to plan future responses during ongoing movement constitutes an important aspect of skillful movement. Based on the results, we propose a framework to investigate the neuronal processes underlying simultaneous planning and execution. Significance StatementAlthough skill learning has typically focused on the training of specific movement sequences, practice improves performance even for random sequences. Here we hypothesize that a fundamental aspect of skilled sequential behavior is the ability to plan multiple actions into the future, both before and during execution. By controlling the amount of visual information available for motor planning, we show that people plan at least three movements beyond current action and that this planning horizon expands with practice. Our findings suggest that coordinating ongoing movement and planning of future actions is an essential component of skilled sequential behavior and offer testable predictions for the neural implementation of online motor planning.