Learning to Back a Trailer in Response to Haptic and Verbal Corrective Cues

Haptic cues intended to support development of a manual skill may hold advantages over verbal cues in that they are delivered directly to the learner’s hands and can shape the movement directly, whereas a verbal cue must first be decoded and translated into a motor command. Haptic guidance has improved learning of steering and timing tasks, with the largest gains among learners of lower initial skill or facing greater difficulty. To test our hypothesis that haptic cueing will improve performance in a manual learning task better than verbal cueing, we compared the performance of three participant groups at backing a hitched trailer. The first group received Haptic, the second Verbal cues, and the third group received No Assistance. Preliminary results show the benefits of assistance, but so far without significant differences between the Haptic and Verbal groups.