Multivariate Relationships Between Motor and Personality Measures in Culturally Deprived High School Pupils

The relationship between personality, as measured by the IPAT-HSPQ, and certain motor performance variables was studied by utilizing the multivariate technique of canonical correlation. Ss for the study were 91 culturally deprived high school students who were achieving well below their expected capacity. A significant canonical relationship was not found between the domains of personality and motor performance. Also, no significant relationships between motor sub-domains and personality were found. It was thus concluded that for the population under study, the domains of motor performance and personality were independent Some discussion of the multivariate technique of canonical correlation was offered and compared with univariate procedures.     

Adaptation to a Nonlinear Visuomotor Amplitude Transformation With Continuous and Terminal Visual Feedback

The control of a cursor on a computer monitor offers a simple means of exploring the limits of the plasticity of human visuomotor coordination. The authors explored the boundary conditions for adaptation to nonlinear visuomotor amplitude transformations. The authors hypothesized that only with terminal visual feedback during practice, but not with continuous visual feedback, humans might develop an internal model of the nonlinear visuomotor amplitude transformation. Thus, 2 groups were engaged in a sensorimotor adaptation task receiving either continuous or terminal visual feedback during the practice phase. In contrast to expectations, adaptive shifts and aftereffects observed in visual open-loop tests were linearly related to target amplitudes for both groups. Although the 2 feedback groups did not differ with respect to adaptive shifts and aftereffects, terminal visual feedback resulted in stable visual open-loop performance for an extended period, whereas movement errors increased after continuous visual feedback during practice. The benefit of continuous visual feedback, on the other hand, was faster closed-loop performance, indicating an optimization of visual closed-loop control.     

Acquiring a Novel Coordination Skill without Practicing the Correct Motor Commands

There is evidence that experience of the sensory consequences, in the absence of practice of the required motor commands, is sufficient to learn new bimanual coordination patterns. This was shown through improvements of an incongruent group who practiced a desired 30° phase offset between the limbs while 1 limb was weighted such that the desired phase relation was achieved when synchronous motor commands were sent to the limbs (P. Atchy-Delama, P. G. Zanone, C. E. Peper, & P. J. Beek, 2005). In addition to testing a similar incongruent and congruent group (i.e., no weight), the authors extended this experiment by removing visual feedback during practice and by including an auditory modeling and passive guidance group. All groups showed improvement, except for the modeling group. The passive guidance group made more errors in posttests than the congruent and incongruent groups. Only the congruent group increased the amount of time around 30° after practice. Active experience of the sensory consequences combined with practice sending appropriate motor commands is the most effective method for learning, even though strategic improvements can be attained without experience of the latter.     

Dynamic and Static Balancing Ability of Preschool Children

Performance differences in dynamic and static balance ability of 150 preschool Ss aged 3,4, and 5 yr. were studied. Ss performed 4 balance-beam tasks and 2 balance-board tasks. An Age by Sex (3 × 2) factorial, design employing both univariate and multivariate ANOVA techniques were the statistics used. For both dynamic and static balance Age was highly significant, and the use of multivariate ANOVA indicated significant sex differences on the static balance tasks. The appropriateness of multivariate techniques where more than one dependent variable is measured on the same population was discussed, and the need to take into account the relationship between these variables when analyzing the data was noted.     

Effects of Classically Differentiated Supplementary Feedback Cues on Tracking Skill

Although previous studies had shown that classical predifferentiation of green (CS-j and red (CS+) cues enabled them to facilitate tracking performance when used as supplementary indicators of correct and incorrect responses respectively, the studies were inconclusive concerning specific conditional properties versus nonspecific arousal consequences of the cues. A sample of 108 Ss was exposed to the same predifferentiation procedure, but then were subgrouped in terms of the kind of feedback signal received in tracking (no signal, red only, green only, both signals). A nonspecificity theory predicts subgroup equality of tracking performances while specificity theory predicts the dependence of performance level on the kind of signal received. Results corroborated previous findings and the view that tracking effects were reasonably attributable to the transfer of specific stimulus functions generated in the differentiation trials.     

Enhancing the Learning of Sport Skills Through External-Focus Feedback

The authors examined how the effectiveness of feedback for the learning of complex motor skills is affected by the focus of attention it induces. The feedback referred specifically either to body movements (internal focus) or to movement effects (external focus). In Experiment 1, groups of novices and advanced volleyball players (N = 48) practiced “tennis” serves under internal-focus or external-focus feedback conditions in a 2 (expertise) × 2 (feedback type) design. Type of feedback did not differentially affect movement quality, but external-focus feedback resulted in greater accuracy of the serves than internal-focus feedback during both practice and retention, independent of the level of expertise. In Experiment 2, the effects of relative feedback frequency as a function of attentional focus were examined. A 2 (feedback frequency: 100% vs. 33%) × 2 (feedback type) design was used. Experienced soccer players (N = 52) were required to shoot lofted passes at a target. External-focus feedback resulted in greater accuracy than internal-focus feedback did. In addition, reduced feedback frequency was beneficial under internal-focus feedback conditions, whereas 100% and 33% feedback were equally effective under external-focus conditions. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of effect-related, as opposed to movement-related, feedback and also suggest that there is a need to revise current views regarding the role of feedback for motor learning.     

Knowledge About Hand Shaping and Knowledge About Objects

Our two experiments investigated associations between cognitive representations of objects and hand-shape categories. Hand configurations were partitioned according to prehensility and the size of the contacting surface, resulting in the classes: pinch, poke, palm, and clench. Experiment 1 elicited object names in response to configuration-name cues, provided ratings of the relevance of each configuration to a set of objects, and probed for the functions determining such relevance. Cueing with a configuration class elicited an associated object category with substantial intersubject agreement, and vice versa. Both the object categories and the functions associated with the four hand-configuration classes differed substantially, although the same object could be associated to some extent with multiple configurations, given variations in function. Experiment 2 elicited the names of hand-configuration classes in response to unfamiliar forms, which varied systematically in depth and the size of the projecting picture-plane surface. The modal response, response time, and degree of intersubject agreement were directly related to these variables. These structural variables, however, did not adequately predict shaping responses to real objects, as ascertained from Experiment 1. The results have implications for cognitive representation of motor categories and hand shaping in response to objects.     

Control of Integrated Task Sequences Shapes Components of Reaching

Reaching toward an object usually consists of a sequence of elemental actions. Using a reaching task sequence, the authors investigated how task elements of that sequence affected feedforward and feedback components of the reaching phase of the movement. Nine right-handed adults performed, with their dominant and nondominant hands, 4 tasks of different complexities: a simple reaching task; a reach-to-grasp task; a reach-to-grasp and lift object task; and a reach-to-grasp, lift, and place object task. Results showed that in the reach-to-grasp and lift object task more time was allocated to the feedforward component of the reach phase, while latency between the task elements decreased. We also found between-hand differences, supporting previous findings of increased efficiency of processing planning-related information in the preferred hand. The presence of task-related modifications supports the concept of contextual effects when planning a movement.     

Conflict-driven adaptive control is enhanced by integral negative emotion on a short time scale*

ABSTRACT

Negative emotion influences cognitive control, and more specifically conflict adaptation. However, discrepant results have often been reported in the literature. In this study, we broke down negative emotion into integral and incidental components using a modern motivation-based framework, and assessed whether the former could change conflict adaptation. In the first experiment, we manipulated the duration of the inter-trial-interval (ITI) to assess the actual time-scale of this effect. Integral negative emotion was induced by using loss-related feedback contingent on task performance, and measured at the subjective and physiological levels. Results showed that conflict-driven adaptive control was enhanced when integral negative emotion was elicited, compared to a control condition without changes in defensive motivation. Importantly, this effect was only found when a short, as opposed to long ITI was used, suggesting that it had a short time scale. In the second experiment, we controlled for effects of feature repetition and contingency learning, and replicated an enhanced conflict adaptation effect when integral negative emotion was elicited and a short ITI was used. We interpret these new results against a standard cognitive control framework assuming that integral negative emotion amplifies specific control signals transiently, and in turn enhances conflict adaptation.     

Children's and adults’ understanding of the “disgust face”

By the age of 4 years, children (N=120) know the meaning of the word disgust as well as they know the meaning of anger and fear; for example, when asked, they are equally able to generate a plausible cause for each of these emotions. Yet, in tasks involving facial expressions (free labelling of faces, deciding whether or not a face expresses disgust, or finding a “disgust face” in an array of faces), a majority of 3- to 7-year-old children (N=144) associated the prototypical “disgust face” with anger and denied its association with disgust (25% of adults on the same tasks did so as well). These results challenge the assumption that all humans easily recognise disgust from its facial expression and that this recognition is a precursor to children's understanding of the emotion of disgust.