Table Of ContentMEMORY AND
CONTROL OF ACTION
Edited by
Richard A. MAGILL
Motor Behavior Laboratory
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA
1983
NORTH-HOLLAND PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM NEW YORK OXFORD
0 North-Holland Publishing Company, 1983
All rights reserved. No part of this puhlication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system. or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic. mechanical,
photocopying. recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner
ISBN: 0 444 86559 4
Publishers:
NORTH-HOLLAND PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM. NEW YORK . OXFORD
Sole disrribukmf or the U.S.A . and Cririada:
ELSEVIER SCIENCE PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.
52 VANDERBILT AVENUE
NEW YORK. N.Y. 10017
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Memory and control of action.
(Advances in psychology ; 12)
Bibliography: p.
Includes indexes.
1. Movement, Psychology of. 2. Memory. 3. Control
(Psychology) 4. Motor ability. 5. Speech.
I. Magill, Richard A. 11. Series: Advances in
psychology (Amsterdam, Netherlands) ; 12. [DNLM:
1. Memory--Congresses. 2. Motor activity--Congresses.
3. Motor skills--Congresses. 4. Verbal behavior--
Congresses. W1 AD798L v.12 / WE 103 M533 19821
BF295. M428 1983 152.3 82-24697
ISBN 0-444-86559-4 (U. S. )
PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS
V
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
JACK A. ADAMS Department of Psychology
University of Illinois
Champaign, Illinois 61820
HUGH W. BUCKINGHAM Department of Speech and the
Interdepartmental Linguistics
Program
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803
RANDELL ELKINS Department of Psychology
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803
ARTHUR D. FISK Department of Psychology
University of Illinois
Champaign, Illinois 61820
LAURIE HEFFERNAN Department of Psychology
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803
BARRY G. HUGHES Motor Behavior Laboratory
University of Wisconsin
Madison, Wisconsin 53706
J. A. SCOTT KELSO Haskins Laboratories
New Haven, Connecticut 06510
Departments of Psychology and
Biobehavioral Sciences
University of Connecticut
Storrs, Connecticut 06268
BETH KERR Department of Kinesiology
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington 98145
RICHARD A. MAGILL School of Health, Physical
Education, Recreation, and
Dance, and the Department of
Psychology
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803
RONALD G. MARTENIUK Department of Kinesiology
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
ROBERT C. MATHEWS Department of Psychology
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803
vi List of Contributors
DONALD G. MACKAY Department of Psychology
University of California at
Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California 90024
GEDIMINAS NAMIKAS Department of Psychology
University of Windsor
Windsor, Ontario, Canada N9B 3P4
SANDRA K. E. ROMANOW Department of Kinesiology
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
DAVID A. ROSENBAUM School of Language and Communication
Hampshire College
Amherst, Massachusetts 01001
ERIC A. ROY Department of Psychology
Mount Sinai Hospital
Toronto, Ontario, Canada MSG 1K5
Department of Kinesiology
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
ELLIOT L. SALTZMAN Haskins Laboratories
New Haven, Connecticut 06510
RICHARD A. SCHMIDT Department of Kinesiology
University of California at
Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California 90024
WALTER SCHNEIDER Department of Psychology
University of Illinois
Champaign, Illinois 61820
JOHN B. SHEA Department of Physical Education
Pennsylvania State University
University Park, Pennsylvania 16801
GEORGE E. STELMACH Motor Behavior Laboratory
University of Wisconsin
Madison, Wisconsin 53705
HARRY A. WHITAKER Department of Hearing and Speech
Sciences
University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland 20742
ROBERT B. WILBERG Department of Physical Education
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2H9
SUSAN T. ZIMNY Department of Psychology
University of Colorado
Boulder, Colorado 80309
XI
PREFACE/INTRODUCTION
As the title of this book indicates, the primary concern here is with
memory and control processes as they relate to action. While this is
the goal toward which this volume en toto is directed, the primary
means of achieving that goal is to focus on evidence related to memory
and motor control processes from a variety of perspectives. These
perspectives include views and research evidence from researchers
engaged in the study of cognitive, verbal, and/or motor behavior
processes. By combining these works, an integrated view of action, in
general, or motor behavior in particular, comes into focus and extends
OUK biases and viewpoints about the underlying processes related to
motor skill learning and performance.
The impetus behind such an approach to looking at memory and control
in motor behavior comes from a concern that occurs all too frequently
in science. That is, there is a tendency for scientists to become so
deeply involved in an area of research that isolation from related
fields of investigation occurs, even though useful perspectives and
insights can be gained from these other areas of study. The
inevitable end of such an insular view is to impede rather than to
facilitate theory development that is so critical to achieving a
comprehensive understanding of ourselves and our world. Oftentimes,
this isolation OCCUKS unwittingly due to a lack of awareness or lack
of availability of work in related fields, often due to the lack of
time that results from being immersed in one's own research. Other
times, however, the solution occurs by choice. Whatever the cause,
the long-term effect is at odds with what science seeks to achieve.
In the study of motor behavior, a tendency toward isolationism becomes
evident when you consider what can be termed some gaps developing in
our general approach to the study of this complex aspect of human
behavior. One gap seems to be in the exchange of knowledge between
researchers and theorists that we have come to label cognitive
psychologists and motor behavior researchers. As a result, possible
underlying commonalities or insights into the behavior under
investigation by these researchers have the potential to lead to the
creation of isolated theories of behavior, which, in fact have much in
common. Second, a gap seems to exist at the theoretical level between
what we label memory and action. The general tendency has been to
treat these as separate entities without directing concern toward
important links between them.
This book, which is an outgrowth of a conference held at Louisiana
State University in February, 1982, represents an attempt at keeping
these gaps from widening. Scholars working in a wide range of areas
of study have been invited to present their views and research to
provide for a healthy exchange of information as well as to address
the memory-to-action transition. Included in this volume are papers
from researchers concerned with cognition, speech production, language
acquisition, limb movement control, among others. Some chapters deal
directly with motor behavior, some with verbal behavior, while others
deal with the interaction between these behavioral domains. The end
result is a collection of scholarly works that offers perspectives on
xii Pref acelln troduction
important issues in motor behavior that enable us to see interesting
parallels between what may be viewed by many as unrelated domains.
One of the difficult tasks encountered as editor of this volume was
determining an organizational scheme for these invited papers.
Several themes run through various papers. Some are position papers
in their approach while others are data-based presentations. Some
deal with verbal behavior only, others are concerned only with motor
skills, while others consider an integrated approach. The organization
selected was based primarily on common concerns in the papers even
though there can be relationships seen for certain issues among
several chapters that are in different parts of the book.
The book is divided into four thematic parts. The first section
includes five chapters that are concerned with providing
position-paper-like perspectives on critical issues related to how we
approach our study of memory and control processes in motor behavior.
As such, these chapters provide a foundation for what is to follow by
providing perspectives on issues that are found in the remaining
sections. The second part focuses on a variety of issues dealing with
our understanding of well-learned skill, especially as related to
memory and attention. Response planning and the resulting action are
directly considered in the third part. Finally, the issue of
context-related effects is discussed in the fourth section.
In the first section, Jack Adams sets the tone for what is to follow
by discussing an issue at the base of the general theme of this
volume. Can the verbal and motor domains of behavior be considered to
be governed by similar laws given our present state of knowledge?
Adams' conclusion is that a satisfactory answer can only reached by
domain-specific research findings that will permit a comparison of
similarities or differences in these domains. Elliot Saltzman and
Scott Kelso argue for an alternative approach to our traditional ways
of viewing memory, learning, and control issues. Certain traditional
assumptions that have guided and characterized the study of memory and
motor control are challenged with an alternative style of inquiry
presented. Their argument is the need to consider a more unified
approach, based on "dynamical principles." In the third chapter,
Robert Wilberg presents an insightful discussion of the first two
chapters by basing his concern on their apparent lack of concern for
the cognitive component of motor behavior. His suggestion to consider
"memory for movement" as distinct from "motor memory" emphasizes the
cognitive-motor distinctiveness issue that still troubles motor
behavior researchers. Beth Kerr takes issue with the need to have a
dichotomy between memory and action by viewing action as linked
directly to representation in memory. She approaches this issue by
focusing on the link between memory and action that she terms "action
concepts," after Allport. As a result, access to representation in
memory can be direct and automatic. In the final chapter, George
Stelmach and Barry Hughes provide a fresh look at an old question.
Their concern is with the role of a theory of attention in our views
of motor control, particularly in terms of the traditional
complementary use of the concepts of automation and attention. They
develop their views around the notion that attention connotes more
PrefaceJ Int roduc tion xiii
than "conscious awareness." They also argue that multiresource models
of attention hold the most hope for a coherent model of attention as
it may relate to skill automaticity.
In Part 11, the focus is on how the learner is different from having
practiced for a long period of time with the result being the
automation of skill. A variety of learning tasks are considered as
the authors deal with this issue of well-learned skill. G. Namikas
considers concept learning as a basis for understanding the nature of
well-learned skill. He discusses motor skill research in terms of
vertical (qualitative) and horizontal (quantitative) processes in
skill acquisition, while arguing for more research directed toward a
vertical processes approach. Walter Schneider and Arthur Fisk set out
to describe the beginning of a theory for the mechanism of skilled
performance. To do this, they discuss the roles and mechanisms of
automatic and controlled forms of information processing. They present
experiments using perceptual search tasks to illustrate the
development of automatic processes over extended periods of practice.
The role of controlled processing is considered in terms of functions
which cannot be accomplished through automatic processing. Richard
Schmidt discusses the first two chapters of this section by
emphasizing future directions for motor learning research. He expands
the issues of memory representations of well-learned skill and the
notion of automaticity. The chapter by Ronald Marteniuk and Sandra
Romanow exemplifies a vertical processes approach. Their data-based
paper considers the hierarchical organization of motor skill
acquisition. Over many practice trials on a wave-form tracking task,
subjects gave evidence that they directed their attention to different
forms of information as they modified their movements. A fitting
conclusion to this section is the chapter by Harry Whitaker.
Following a series of chapters where automaticity has been
consistently addressed, Whitaker presents an essay to consider,
whether there is evidence to form a brain model of automatization.
Using language processing as his basis, he considers interesting
clinically-based neurological evidence to support a model of
automatization that he describes as based on localization rather than
the traditional laterality or hierarchical arrangement of functions.
Part 111 includes four chapters that consider response planning and
its link with action. In the first chapter of this section, Donald
MacKay develops his theory of intentions by considering what
intentions are, how they are represented in the brain, and how they
are activated and controlled. By focusing on the language system,
MacKay addresses several concerns related to better understanding the
transition from movement plans to action. Interesting applications of
his theory to a variety of motor skill problems are also presented.
David Rosenbaum approaches the planning-action link by considering the
selection process of body movements. While much of the chapter is
devoted to a review of research related to the movement precuing
technique, the primary concern is with the decision process involved
in movement selection. Rosenbaum's conclusion is that the movement
precuing technique has revealed some important underlying principles
of movement selection. As such, knowledge about these principles can
be used as a basis for investigating movement executions by
x iv Pref acelln troduc tion
considering how these principles fit with constraints acting on the
movement execution system. The final two chapters concern planning
and action by focusing on apraxia. Buckingham considers apraxia of
speech and language while Roy discusses apraxia of limb movement. In
Buckingham's chapter, the planning-action link is highlighted as he
argues for the need to consider apraxia of speech and apraxia of
language as separate. His point is that language apraxias are
planning apraxias whereas speech apraxias are implementation apraxias.
Roy similarly considers apraxia in terms of involving disruptions to
the conceptual and production systems. His perspective. however, is
to discuss apraxia in the context of his view of the action system.
The final section of this book, Part IV, deals with the topic of the
influence of context conditions on memory and control processes.
While this section is obviously oriented toward the cognitive side of
motor behavior, it provides a view that stresses the need to take into
account cognitive processes in motor behavior theory. Robert Mathews,
Laurie Olson, and Randall Jenkins begin this section by discussing the
influence of context on the recognition of words. They consider
automatic and effortful retrieval processes in recognition memory by
presenting a series of experiments where various context conditions
are manipulated. John Shea and Susan Zimny then deal directly with
motor skill but emphasize the central role of cognitive processes in
motor performance. By considering experiments investigating
contextual interference effects in memory, they argue that results of
these experiments support a view of memory representation that
emphasizes the operations used by subjects during performance rather
than the sensory attributes of the act. Richard Magill discusses the
Mathews et al. and Shea and Zimny chapters by discussing four issues
in memory, learning, and control in motor behavior that can be given
useful insight by considering them from studying the effects of
context conditions.
While this overview of the chapters in this volume has been directed
toward indicating how each chapter fits into the general theme in its
respective section, there are other themes that run through chapters
that are not necessarily in the same section. One such theme concerns
the representation of information in memory. Saltzman and Kelso
consider this as they argue against traditional views based on
features OK cues of movements and representations and argue for a view
based on dynamical principles. Shea and Zimny also argue against
traditional views of representation, which are typically based on
sensory features of movements, and suggest an operations-based view.
Schmidt discusses memory representation by reviewing a variety of
research dealing with this issue from several approaches. The
generalized motor program and invariant features of its representation
are at the heart of this discussion. MacKay considers the
representation of intentions as "content nodes", which represents a
class of intended actions. Magill also addresses the representation
issue by discussing how the study of context effects can provide some
insights about the nature of representation in memory.
Automaticity of movement is another theme that is considered by
several authors. Kerr considers action concepts as the link between
PrefaceJInt roduction xv
memory and action that permits access to a well-learned representation
in memory to be direct and automatic. Stelmach and Hughes argue that
there is a need for a viable theory of automaticity that fits workable
theories of attention and motor control. Schneider and Fisk address
some questions raised by Stelmach and Hughes in terms of controlled
and automatic processes that are directly related to automaticity
regarding the development and role of these processes in skill
learning and control. Namikas discusses automaticity in the context
of its qualitative nature in the acquisition processes of motor skill
performance. Schmidt considers automaticity as one of the premier
issues in motor learning and control that should be investigated.
Marteniuk and Romanow address the automaticity issue as they describe
response organization and information use changes that result from
practice. Whitaker gets involved in the automaticity issue by
presenting a brain model for automation.
Finally, the theme of translating plans, concepts, or intentions into
action is a popular topic for authors in several sections of this
work. Saltzman and Kelso address this problem as being at the heart
of their argument for the need for a more unified approach to the
study of motor control, learning, and memory. Kerr proposes the
"action concept'' as the link between memory and control. MacKay
describes a mechanism for activating the representations of
intentions. Namikas considers the linkage of cognitive and motor
schemata and their interaction with the environment as being essential
to an understanding of this issue. Rosenbaum argues that
understanding how movement selection decisions are made is critical to
understanding this translation issue. Roy and Buckingham discuss
apraxias as a basis for considering the planning-action connection,
Roy with limb movement and Buckingham with speech and language
apraxias.
While other common themes may be found in several chapters, these few
examples will suffice to direct your attention to the broad range of
perspectives that are presented on issues critical to furthering our
understanding of memory and control processes.
The study of processes underlying motor skill acquisition and control
is a complex undertaking. Developing an adequate theory for motor
behavior will require a concerted effort by theorists to consider the
interactions that occur between the cognitive and motor domains as
well as the underlying process specific to the performance of motor
skills.
* * * *
There are many people to thank for their efforts in helping bring to
reality the conference on which this book is based, as well as the
book itself. First, I wish to thank the contributors to this volume
for the quality of papers they prepared and for the speed with which
they prepared their manuscripts following the conference. Second, I
would like to thank Tim Lee and Bob Mathews for their many
suggestions, comments, and criticisms during the development of the
xvi PrefaceJInt roductiori
topics to be considered at the conference itself. Also, George
Stelmach, Co-editor of the Advances in Psychology Series deserves
recognition for his encouragement to carry out the idea of having such
a conference and developing it into this book. Further, I am
indebted to the many individuals and organizations at Louisiana State
University who made both the Conference and this book possible. With
regard to the Conference, I want to thank Dan Walsh, Director of
Conferences and Short Courses in the Division of Continuing Education.
He was the prime mover in the organizational demands in hosting this
conference. Dean Billy Smith of the College of Education and Ronald
Byrd, Director of the School of Health, Physical Education,
Recreation, and Dance also deserve much thanks for their support and
efforts in providing as much material and moral support as they did.
The University Chancellor's Office, Dean Henry Snyder of the College
of Arts and Sciences, Larry Siegel, Chair of the Department of
Psychology, Hugh Buckingham, Director of the Inderdepartmental Program
in Linguistics, and Geoff Broadhead of Physical Education, each
contributed funds from their respective programs that enabled the
conference to be conducted. Also, Vice-Chancellors Carolyn Hargrave
and Sean McGlyn deserve credit for their support for this conference.
Finally, this book became a reality because of the aid and support of
several individuals. Tim Lee did yeoman's service in copy editing the
original manuscripts from each author and in developing the authors
index and subject index. Karla Lemoine and Sheryl Ramirez went beyond
the call of duty in typing the chapters so that they would appear in
the camera-ready form you see before you. Dean Smith deserves credit
and thanks for directing me to and letting me employ these two capable
individuals from his office staff. His support of this effort is also
acknowledged. Thanks is also due to Ron Byrd for his support and
encouragement in carrying out this project.
An additional acknowledgement is in order here. I would like to thank
Robert Christina, whose decision to not include his paper in this
volume was accepted with regret. His insightful discussion at the
Conference of the papers by Kerr and Marteniuk and Romanow, in
addition to his presence, were valuable to the success of the
Conference.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge Susan Straley, who became my wife
only seven weeks after the Conference ended. Her perserverance,
patience, and understanding during the preparatory and carrying out
phases of the Conference and during the time involved in completing
this book are greatly appreciated.
Richard A. Magill
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
