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第一部分 选修八 Module 3-4 Ⅰ.阅读理解 A If you have ever tried a new sport or attempted learning a musical instrument, you are well aware that the hardest part is getting started. Once you figure out the technique, the skills return fairly easily, even if they are not used for long periods of time. Most experts attribute this to “muscle memory”， which means the brain remembers the action and can recall it when needed. Now some researchers from John Hopkins University believe there is another factor that may be as important in recalling previously learned motor skills—the errors made while learning the task. The study led by Reza Shadmehr, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, involved asking volunteers to play a simple video game: hitting a red target dot with a slightly smaller blue dot, similar to playing virtual games. What the gamers did not know was that as soon as they mastered the game, the researchers reprogrammed it by moving the blue dot slightly offcourse, thereby forcing them to restart the learning process. What the scientists observed was that though the volunteers did make mistakes every time the game was changed, they got successively faster at mastering it. Shadmehr believes that this has something to do with the fact that in addition to delivering the task to muscle memory, the brain is also recognizing each wrong move and learning how to correct it. He compares it to having a coach that points out the mistakes and makes suggestions on how to improve. | 
