Abstract
Traditional views of sensorimotor adaptation, or adaptation of movements to perturbed sensory feedback, emphasize the role of automatic, implicit correction of sensory prediction errors (differences between predicted and actual sensory outcomes). However, latent memories formed from sensorimotor adaptation, prominently evidenced in improved learning (i.e., savings), have recently been attributed to strategic corrections of task errors (failures to achieve task goals). To dissociate contributions of task errors and sensory prediction errors to latent sensorimotor memories, we perturbed target locations to remove or enforce task errors during learning and/or test. We show that prior learning to correct task errors was sufficient for savings: a history of sensory prediction errors was neither sufficient nor obligatory for savings. Limiting movement preparation time further revealed two distinct components of this learning: 1) time-consuming, flexible strategies, and 2) rapidly expressible, inflexible stimulus-response associations. The results show that adaptive responses to sensorimotor perturbations take many forms.