Memory Characteristics of Kinesthetic Information

Several kinesthetic cues may underlie the retention of movements: joint position receptors, muscle stretch receptors, tendon stretch receptors, cutaneous senses, duration of movements, and motor outflow all provide cues. An attempt was made to separate subsets of cues used for movement reproduction by varying the characteristics of the movements. Ss reproduced either the end Location of a movement or the Distance plus Location. The original and reproduction movements involved either the same or different muscle tensions. These manipulations failed to result in different retention characteristics. In all cases there was little loss of accuracy over a 7-sec. retention interval unless the retention interval was filled with a distracting task. These results are quite different from those of a number of other studies of movement retention, suggesting that different cues do have different retention characteristics.