Sensory and motor components of highly skilled action sequences [Elektronische Ressource] / vorgelegt von Michael P. Berner

Michael P. Berner

Sujets

• Psychologie

Informations

• Publié par: julius-maximilians-universitat_wurzburg
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 8
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Sensory and motor components
of highly skilled action sequences





Inaugural-Dissertation
zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der
Philosophischen Fakultät III
der
Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg



Vorgelegt von
Michael P. Berner
aus Bamberg








Würzburg
2007


Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. J. Hoffmann
Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. H.-P. Krüger



Acknowledgments

There are many without whom this thesis would not have come to be. First and foremost, I
would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Dr. Joachim Hoffmann for invaluable advice and
guidance as well as for always being available for inspiring and fruitful discussions. Among
my colleagues at the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Psychology III, all of whom I
would like to thank cordially, I am particularly indebted to Andrea Kiesel and Annika
Wagener for sharing knowledge and expertise, and for providing useful suggestions, as well
as for ceaseless encouragement, and to Georg Schüssler for building the response devices that
were necessary for some of the experiments. Also, I am grateful to Markus Maier for support
from afar. Furthermore, I would like to thank all of the students who have participated in data
acquisition. Last but not least, extra special thanks to my wonderful wife Anja for constant
support and encouragement.

















Note
Experiments 1 and 2 of this thesis will be published in Psychological Research in an article
entitled “Effector-related sequence learning in a bimanual-bisequential serial reation time
task”.
i Index

1 ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................. 1
2 INTRODUCTION........ 2
2.1 INVESTIGATING SEQUENCE LEARNING WITH THE SERIAL REACTION TIME (SRT) TASK ...................... 3
2.1.1 Characterization and Types of Sequence Structures....................................................................... 4
2.1.2 The Contents of Mental Sequence Representations......................................................................... 5
2.2 INDEPENDENT LEARNING OF SEQUENCES ............................................................................................. 7
2.3 EFFECTOR SPECIFICITY OF SEQUENCE LEARNING............................................................................... 10
2.3.1 Evidence for Effector Independence in the SRT Task.................................................................... 11
2.3.2 Evidence for Effector Specificity in the SRT Task and Other Sequencing Tasks........................... 14
2.3.3 Reconciling Conflicting Findings Regarding the Effector Specificity of Sequence Knowledge.... 20
2.4 GOALS OF THE PRESENT RESEARCH ................................................................................................... 22
3 EXPERIMENTS 1 & 2: SIMULTANEOUS BIMANUAL-BISEQUENTIAL SRT TASK................ 25
3.1 EXPERIMENT 1.................................................................................................................................... 25
3.1.1 Method........... 26
3.1.2 Results............ 30
3.1.3 Discussion...... 36
3.2 EXPERIMENT 2..... 37
3.2.1 Method........... 38
3.2.2 Results............ 40
3.2.3 Discussion...... 46
4 EXPERIMENTS 3–5: ALTERNATING BIMANUAL-BISEQUENTIAL SRT TASK...................... 49
4.1 EXPERIMENT 3.................................................................................................................................... 50
4.1.1 Method........... 51
4.1.2 Results............ 53
4.1.3 Discussion...... 56
4.2 EXPERIMENT 4..... 58
4.2.1 Method........... 58
4.2.2 Results............ 61
4.2.3 Discussion...... 67
4.3 EXPERIMENT 5..... 69
4.3.1 Method........... 70
4.3.2 Results............ 74
4.3.3 Discussion...... 84
5 EXPERIMENTS 6 & 7: UNIMANUAL SRT TASK.............................................................................. 86
5.1 EXPERIMENT 6.................................................................................................................................... 86
5.1.1 Method........... 87
5.1.2 Results............ 91
5.1.3 Discussion...... 97
5.2 EXPERIMENT 7... 100
5.2.1 Method......... 100
5.2.2 Results.......... 102
5.2.3 Discussion.... 108
6 GENERAL DISCUSSION...................................................................................................................... 111
7 REFERENCES......... 119
8 SUMMARY IN GERMAN: ZUSAMMENFASSUNG......................................................................... 125
9 CURRICULUM VITAE IN GERMAN: LEBENSLAUF .................................................................... 129

ii

Index of Figures

FIGURE 1. .................................................. 3
FIGURE 2. ................................................ 31
FIGURE 3. 32
FIGURE 4. 38
FIGURE 5. 41
FIGURE 6. 42
FIGURE 7. ................................................ 46
FIGURE 8. 53
FIGURE 9. 54
FIGURE 10. .............................................. 61
FIGURE 11. 62
FIGURE 12. 65
FIGURE 13. 67
FIGURE 14. .............................................. 71
FIGURE 15. 75
FIGURE 16. 78
FIGURE 17. 82
FIGURE 18. 87
FIGURE 19. .............................................. 90
FIGURE 20. 93
FIGURE 21. 96
FIGURE 22. ............................................ 101
FIGURE 23. 103



Index of Tables

TABLE 1................................................... 12
TABLE 2 16
TABLE 3 27
TABLE 4 76
TABLE 5 77
TABLE 6................................................... 79
TABLE 7 80
TABLE 8 81
TABLE 9 83
TABLE 10............................................... 107
TABLE 11 112


iii
iv
1 Abstract
A series of experiments was conducted in order to investigate motor contributions to
learning highly skilled action sequences in contrast to sensory contributions. Experiments 1–4
made use of a bimanual-bisequential variant of the serial reaction time task: Presentation of
imperative stimuli was arranged such that participants’ left-hand and right-hand responses
followed different sequences independently of one another, thus establishing a compound
sequence spanning both hands. At least partly independent learning of the two concurrently
implemented hand-related sequences was demonstrated after extensive practice under condi-
tions of both simultaneous (Experiments 1 & 2) and alternating (Experiments 3 & 4) stimulus
presentation and responding. It persisted when there was only one imperative stimulus for
presenting both hand-related sequences (Experiments 2–4) instead of two separate imperative
stimuli (Experiments 1 & 2), one for each sequence, even when the hand-related sequences
were correlated and massive integrated learning of the compound sequence occurred (Ex-
periment 4). As for the nature of the independently acquired sequence representations, trans-
ferable sequence knowledge was acquired only when there was a separate imperative stimulus
for each sequence (Experiments 1 & 2) but not otherwise (Experiments 2–4). The most likely
stimulus-based representations which allow for intermanual transfer can be regarded as sen-
sory components of highly skilled action sequences, whereas motor components can be con-
sidered as being reflected in effector-specific, non-transferable sequence knowledge. The
same decomposition logic applies to transferable and non-transferable sequence knowledge
observed under conditions of unimanual practice of a single sequence (Experiments 6 & 7).
The advantage of practicing a key press sequence with fingers of one hand as opposed to
practicing it with fingers of both hands (Experiment 5) also implicates a motor component as
the two assignments were equivalent in all other respects. Moreover, Experiments 6 and 7
showed that hand-specific sequence knowledge can develop after relatively little practice (as
little as approximately 120 sequence repetitions). Presumably, this occurs especially in tasks
with particularly pronounced requirements for coarticulation between consecutive finger
movements. In sum, the present series of experiments provides compelling evidence for an
effector-specific component of sequence learning. Albeit relatively small in size, it emerged
consistently under various conditions. By contributing to the refinement of sequential action
execution it can play a role in attaining high levels of performance.

1 Introduction
2 Introduction
All behavior is sequential, that is, it consists of ordered sequences of actions. This is
true for mundane tasks like brewing coffee as well as for highly complex ones like speaking.
Repeatedly executing a sequence of actions typically refines and improves performance, indi-
cating the development of sequencing skill. The capa