Abstracts 2005 - The Psychonomic Society

Saturday Evening Posters 5094–5099
In recent years, many studies have compared perceptual or cognitive
abilities between people with greater or lesser working memory capacity
(span). In laboratory tests, it appears that lower span people are less
efficient at suppressing irrelevant information, keeping task-specific
goals in mind, and maintaining vigilance. When both groups are
placed under cognitive load, these differences tend to disappear. We
conducted a naturalistic experiment, with high- and low-span participants
playing the game Taboo for prizes. In Taboo, a clue-giver must
elicit a target word from teammates, without using the best associates
as clues (“taboo” words). Using multiple indices of performance, we
found that higher span people played more efficiently than lower span
players. They committed fewer Taboo errors, perseverated less often,
and guessed correctly more often. This was true even in a control condition
with Taboo words eliminated. The results reinforce findings
from many laboratory procedures (e.g., Stroop interference, cocktail
party effect, and antisaccade task).
(5094)
Attentional Control in Novice and Expert Baseball Batters. BROOKE
CASTANEDA & ROB GRAY, Arizona State University (sponsored by
Rob Gray)—This study investigated the attentional control structures
involved in baseball batting. Novice and expert baseball players participated
in four dual-task conditions: two that directed attention to
skill execution (skill/internal [hand movement] and skill/external
[bat movement]) and two that directed attention to the environment
(environmental/irrelevant [tones] and environmental/relevant [ball
rotation]). Temporal swing errors for experts were (1) lower for
skill/external than for skill/internal and (2) lower for environmental/
relevant than for environmental/irrelevant. For experts, the best batting
performance was in the environmental/relevant condition. For
novices, there were no significant differences in batting performance
across conditions. Secondary task judgments were accurate for all
conditions, suggesting that participants directed their attention to the
instructed location. We conclude that experts should attend to ball rotation
to achieve optimal hitting performance because it (1) does not
disrupt proceduralized knowledge, (2) allows batters to effectively
process the swing outcome, and (3) allows batters to utilize rotation
to judge pitch speed.
• MOTOR CONTROL •
(5095)
Tapping the Mind for Movement. ROBRECHT P. R. D. VAN DER WEL
& DAVID A. ROSENBAUM, Pennsylvania State University (sponsored
by David A. Rosenbaum)—Psychologists can make special contributions
to the study of movement by identifying psychological determinants
of movement forms. Similarly, kinesiologists can make
special contributions to the study of psychology by identifying biomechanical
determinants of psychological control. With this interaction
in mind, we asked university students to tap targets in time with
a metronome. Aspects of their performance reflected a blend of biomechanical
and psychological factors. Because the psychologically
driven features of their movements were similar to aspects of performance
that emerge in more intellectual tasks, one may speculate that
demands of movement control establish the basis for other psychological
phenomena.
(5096)
Multiresolution Model of Human Motor Control. OH-SANG KWON,
ZYGMUNT PIZLO, HOWARD N. ZELAZNIK, & GEORGE T.-C.
CHIU, Purdue University (sponsored by Zygmunt Pizlo)—Multiresolution
architecture is a well-established model of the human visual system.
According to this model, the time it takes to judge the line of length
D with accuracy d is proportional to log(D/d). Interestingly, the same
function, called Fitts’s law, is used to characterize skilled motor performance,
suggesting that the visual and motor systems may share the
same multiresolution architecture. To verify this claim, we tested
human subjects in a transfer of motor skill. In the experiment, a
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trained motor skill was transferred to the task (1) where the sizes of
movements remained the same but more accurate movements were required
or (2) where the sizes of movements were scaled by the same
factor as the required accuracy. Results showed that the degree of
transfer in (2) was substantially higher than in (1), supporting the multiresolution
model.
(5097)
Cooperative and Competitive Ideomotor Movements. ANNE
HÄBERLE, GISA ASCHERSLEBEN, RAFAEL LABOISSIÈRE, &
WOLFGANG PRINZ, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and
Brain Sciences—Ideomotor movements occur involuntarily when we
observe another person’s action. They reflect two aspects of the observed
action. Perceptually induced ideomotor movements correspond
to an actually observed movement. Intentionally induced ideomotor
movements relate to the action goal of the observed action. The present
experiment investigated both aspects: Subjects’ finger movements
were recorded while they watched on a computer screen how another
person attempted to steer a ball toward its target in order to achieve a
hit. Perceptually induced ideomotor movements were found to relate
to the ball’s movements on the screen. Intentionally induced movements
were shown to relate to the attempts to achieve a hit. When subjects
had a personal interest in the observed action, their ideomotor
movements were modulated by that interest. When subjects benefited
from an observed hit, their ideomotor movements reflected cooperative
intentions. When subjects experienced a monetary loss for an observed
hit, their ideomotor movements reflected competitive intentions.
(5098)
Temporal Coordination of Actions and Auditory Feedback in Sequence
Production. PETER Q. PFORDRESHER & BRIAN BENITEZ,
University of Texas, San Antonio—Delayed auditory feedback (DAF)
causes asynchronies between perception and action that disrupt production
(Lee, 1950), relative to normal feedback. Varying amounts of
disruption have been found for different delays. These differences
may reflect the phase location of feedback onsets, relative to produced
interresponse intervals (e.g., Finney & Warren, 2003), or the absolute
temporal separation between actions and sounds (e.g., MacKay,
1987). Three experiments addressed this issue by observing production
with traditional DAF, which uses a constant temporal separation
or delays that adjust temporal separation to maintain the phase location
of feedback onsets. Participants (trained pianists and nonmusicians)
played simple isochronous melodies on a keyboard or tapped
an isochronous beat at three production rates. Disruption was best predicted
by the phase location of feedback onsets and was diminished
when feedback onsets formed harmonic phase ratios (e.g., phase synchrony).
These results support the view that perception and action are
coordinated in relative time.
(5099)
Two Modes of Sensorimotor Integration in Intention-Based and
Stimulus-Based Actions. FLORIAN WASZAK, CNRS, Paris and Max
Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Munich,&
ARVID HERWIG & WOLFGANG PRINZ, Max Planck Institute for
Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences—Human actions may be driven
endogenously (to produce desired environmental effects) or exogenously
(to accommodate to environmental demands). There is a large
body of evidence indicating that these two kinds of actions are controlled
by different neural substrates. However, little is known about
what happens—in functional terms—on these different “routes to action.”
Ideomotor approaches claim that actions are selected with respect
to their perceptual consequences. We report experiments that
support the validity of the ideomotor principle and that, at the same
time, show that it is subject to a far-reaching constraint: It holds for
endogenously driven actions only. Our results suggests that the activity
of the two “routes to action” is based on different types of learning:
The activity of the system guiding stimulus-based actions is accompanied
by stimulus–response (sensorimotor) learning, whereas