Mean step mean 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，因为人们通常认为这类活动已被完全掌握。我们以健康年轻成年人为研究对象，探究了重复执行计时起立行走测试（Timed-Up-and-Go, TUG）所产生的效应。该临床测试用于评估与日常功能相关的运动能力，包括从坐姿站起、行走、转身并回到坐姿的动作。本次研究的15名受试者在单次测试会话中连续完成18次TUG测试，并于次日及一周后接受了复测。受试者均被录像记录，并佩戴了惯性测量单元（inertial measurement unit）。任务完成时长呈现出稳健的提升；测试表现可通过幂函数进行良好拟合：测试会话初期提升幅度显著，后续测试则逐渐趋近平台期，这与新型任务学习中的表现规律相符。此外，上述提升效果在隔夜及一周后均得到了良好保持，且在后续测试会话中仍实现了进一步提升。步态运动学特征同样出现了显著的会话内与会话间变化：部分参数在会话间发生了重新校准，而其余参数则呈现出延迟的会话间变化，这表明存在练习后的记忆巩固过程。即便是常见的日常任务，也可通过练习实现优化；对于长期熟练掌握的例行任务，健康年轻成年人仅需进行少量连续的任务重复，即可获得持久的表现提升。这种在高度熟习任务中产生的新学习，其时间进程符合新型“实操方法”（程序性知识，procedural knowledge）的习得特征。