Mean step max. acc. lumbar X data.

The notion that young healthy adults can substantially improve in activities that are part of their daily routine is often overlooked because it is assumed that such activities have come to be fully mastered. We followed, in young healthy adults, the effects of repeated executions of the Timed-Up-and-Go (TUG) task, a clinical test that assesses the ability to execute motor activities relevant to daily function—rising from a seated position, walking, turning and returning to a seated position. The participants (N = 15) performed 18 consecutive trials of the TUG in one session, and were retested on the following day and a week later. The participants were video recorded and wore inertial measurement units. Task execution times improved robustly; performance was well fitted by a power function, with large gains at the beginning of the session and nearing plateau in later trials, as one would expect in the learning of a novel task. Moreover, these gains were well retained overnight and a week later, with further gains accruing in the subsequent test-sessions. Significant intra-session and inter-session changes occurred in step kinematics as well; some aspects underwent inter-sessions recalibrations, but other aspects showed delayed inter-session changes, suggesting post-practice memory consolidation processes. Even common everyday tasks can be improved upon by practice; a small number of consecutive task repetitions can trigger lasting gains in young healthy individuals performing highly practiced routine tasks. This new learning in highly familiar tasks proceeded in a time-course characteristic of the acquisition of novel ‘how to’ (procedural) knowledge.

健康年轻成年人在日常例行活动中可获得显著提升这一观点，常被忽视——因为人们默认此类活动已被完全掌握。本研究针对健康年轻成年人，考察了重复完成计时起身行走任务（Timed-Up-and-Go, TUG）的效应。TUG是一项临床测试，用于评估与日常功能相关的运动能力，即从坐姿起身、行走、转身并返回坐姿的能力。本次研究的受试者共15名，他们在单次实验中连续完成18次TUG任务，并于次日及一周后接受复测。受试者被全程录像记录，且佩戴了惯性测量单元（inertial measurement unit）。任务完成时长得到显著提升；受试者的表现可通过幂函数良好拟合：实验初期提升幅度较大，后续试次中逐渐趋近平台期，这与学习全新任务时的表现规律一致。此外，这些提升在隔夜及一周后仍得到良好保持，且在后续的复测中还出现了进一步的提升。步行动作的运动学特征也出现了显著的实验内及实验间变化：部分参数在实验间发生了重新校准，而另一些参数则出现了延迟的实验间变化，这提示存在练习后的记忆巩固过程。即便常见的日常活动，也可通过练习获得提升；对于长期反复进行的例行任务，健康年轻成年人仅需少量连续重复任务即可获得持久的能力提升。这种在高度熟悉的任务中产生的新学习，其时间进程符合新型“操作方法”（程序性知识，procedural knowledge）的习得特征。