The impact of feedback on tactile discrimination task performance

Research in the fields of psychology and neuroscience often rely on tasks that participants perform to fulfill the requirements of a study. These tasks are administered with either feedback, partial feedback, or no feedback given to the participant. The purpose of this study is to compare and contrast the impact of feedback vs. no feedback on a tactile discrimination task. The goal of providing feedback should, in theory, be to motivate participants while performing a task without altering the results. To test this hypothesis, a group of 22 participants was instructed to take two sequential amplitude discrimination tests using the Brain Gauge; one test with feedback and one without. The results show a clear indication that when presented with feedback, participants performed better than without feedback, and it was speculated that the improvement in performance was due to an improvement in motivation, which was supported by a simple survey. The study results suggest that future research should utilize feedback as a means for motivation in participants and should investigate the effects of only positive or negative feedback as well as how feedback would affect scores and motivation levels during long-term experiments.