Coordination Flashcards
Attention is a limited resource, how do the demands of attention change?
The higher the automaticity of the movement, the less demand for attention
What is one key way of reducing attention resources??
To coordinate the tasks and optimise interference
Two tasks of similar timing can be coordinated, whereas those with different timing patterns require greater attention, and hence show increased attention resources (and more chances of subsequent error)
What is a unit of action??
Complex action movements can be seen as a series of motor programmes linked together. Each motor programme can be called a ‘unit of action’
The defining separation between units can be based around the relative timing of the movement i.e. A change in timing represents a change in the movement unit.
What did Schneider and Schmidt (1995) find when asking participants to intercept a virtual object using a hand held lever?
Found variations from A-H, indicating different units for each action .
They found a marked change in the correlation of accelerations from A-D and F-H and hence moving the lever to intercept the virtual target consisted of 2 separate units
What did Holt and Taylor (1981) find when looking at energy use in horse gait via oxygen use?
The average speed of each movement showed no differences in relative energy consumption for the different speeds.
Typically U bend shapes for the walk,trot and gallop. Units that were abnormally slow/fast results in higher energy use
Therefore if was suggested that the higher energy consumption was due to the movements variability and unstable coordination
What is the Froude number and when was it used ?
Equals speed normalised for leg length
Used in Dietrich and warren (1998) were they found similar data to Holt and Taylor (1981)
What does dynamic pattern theory suggest?
That continuous action coordinates on the basis of stability, where stability is defined by the relationship between movement variability and efficiency
In regards to dynamic pattern theory, what does increased variability lead to? Also, how is efficiency improved?
With increased variability, a decline in motor efficiency occurs (i.e. Errors increase)
To improve efficiency, the dynamic pattern of the movement changes (to reduce variability)
What a change in dynamic pattern lead to?
Provides a “self-organised” process that establishes a more stable pattern
What are anti-phase and in-phase movements?
Actions made together in asymmetry are known as anti-phase
Actions made together in symmetry are known as in-phase
Antiphase movements will change to inphase movements in about 10 seconds
Yamanishi et al (1980) compared the stability of inphase and anti-phase continuous movements, what did they find??
Found the most stable patterns were the symmetrical inphase and antiphase continuous movements
Constant error was better for in phase movements
What did Kelso et al (1984;1986) find when looking at the effects of frequency?
Found that variance increases with speed for anti-phase patterns .
The data showed that as anti-phase movements were made faster, the coordination of the response becomes more variable.
What can be seen with very fast speeds in Kelso’s study?
The antiphase switched to the more stable in-phase pattern. Thus, in phase movements are more stable and the anti-phase movement “self-organises” itself to a more stable pattern (this is dynamic pattern theory)
