With the development of more sophisticated measurement techniques it has become even more evident that variability is a ubiquitous and fundamental characteristic of human performance. More than a century ago Woodworth’s pioneering studies demonstrated this phenomenon at the example of simple line drawing movements ( Vaillancourt & Newell, 2001 Woodworth, 1899). Some of the very first empirical studies in motor control have already pointed out that humans never seem to reproduce a movement in exactly the same fashion, even if they try. Introduction: Variability, Control, and Learning Their advantages and limitations are discussed. ![]() We present a method that parses the structure of variability into four conceptually motivated components and review three methods that are currently used in motor control research. Variability over repeated performances is analyzed with a view to this solution manifold. We present one route into this problem that is particularly suited for tasks with redundant degrees of freedom: task performance is parsed into execution and result variables that are related by some function which provides a set of equivalent executions for a given result. To better understand the processes underlying acquisition and control of movements we show how the examination of variability and its changes with practice provides a suitable window to shed light on this phenomenon. However, learning manifests itself through more than just a reduction of random noise. Hence, during practice performance variability undergoes changes leading to an overall reduction. Although variability is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of movement in all biological systems, skilled performance is typically associated with a low level of variability and, implicitly, random noise.
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