Origami folding: Memory load effects on acquisition of sequential skills.

Cognitive and motor memory loads can affect sequential skills. Differentiating the execution and the acquisition of sequential skills, we studied the impact of cognitive or motoric dual-task loads on performance in Origami folding and changes with practice. Participants (N = 53) folded five Origami figures for four times each, which were randomly paired with five types of secondary tasks to cause either cognitive (verbal vs. visuospatial) or motoric (isochronous vs. nonisochronous tapping) memory load or none (control condition). Origami performance showed a typical learning curve from Repetition 1 to Repetition 4. We observed a dissociation between variants of dual-task load influencing Origami folding performance vs. the variants influencing learning (i.e. change in performance across the four repetitions). In particular, the learning of Origami folding was only interfered by the memory load of the cognitive visuospatial secondary task as well as by the isochronous tapping secondary task. This might be due to the use of visuospatial sketchpad and absolute timing mechanism during the acquisition of Origami folding. The performance of Origami folding was moderated by the isochronous tapping secondary task.