Table Of ContentContributors
Jac\ A. Adams
Sheldon Baron
Gordon L. Diewert
Carol A. Fowler
]antes S. Fran\
Barry H. Kantowitz
J. A. Scott Kelso
Beth Kerr
James L. Knight, Jr.
Ronald L. Knoll
Ronald G. Marteniu\
Stephen Monsell
Κ. M. Newell
Richard W. Pew
Richard A. Schmidt
Judith L. Smith
Waneen Wyric\ Spirduso
George E. Stelmach
Saul Sternberg
M. T. Turvey
Stephen A. Wallace
Alan M. Wing
Charles E. Wright
Howard N. Zelazni\
INFORMATION PROCESSING
IN MOTOR CONTROL
AND LEARNING
Edited by
George Ε. Stelmach
Motor Behavior Laboratory
University of Wisconsin—Madison
Madison, Wisconsin
ACADEMIC PRESS New York San Francisco London 1978
A Subsidiary of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers
COPYRIGHT © 1978, BY ACADEMIC PRESS, INC.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED OR
TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, ELECTRONIC
OR MECHANICAL, INCLUDING PHOTOCOPY, RECORDING, OR ANY
INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, WITHOUT
PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER.
ACADEMIC PRESS, INC.
Ill Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10003
United Kingdom Edition published by
ACADEMIC PRESS, INC. (LONDON) LTD.
24/28 Oval Road, London NW1 7DX
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title :
Information processing in motor control and learning.
Includes bibliographies.
1. Perceptual-motor learning. 2. Human information
processing. 3. Sensory-motor integration. 4. Physical
education and training. I. Stelmach, George E.
BF295.M67 152.3'34 77-25736
ISBN 0-12-665960-5
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
List of Contributors
Numbers in parentheses indicate the pages on which the authors' contributions begin.
Jack A. Adams (229), Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Ur-
bana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois 61820
Sheldon Baron (71), Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., 50 Moulton Street, Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts 02138
Gordon L. Diewert * (241), Motor Behavior Laboratory, University of Wiscon-
sin—Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706
Carol A. Fowler (1), Department of Psychology, Dartmouth College, Hanover,
New Hampshire 03755
James S. Frank f (183), Department of Physical Education, University of South-
ern California, Los Angeles, California 90007
Barry H. Kantowitz (205), Department of Psychology, Purdue University, West
Lafayette, Indiana 47907
J. A. Scott Kelso (79), Motor Behavior Laboratory, University of Iowa, Iowa
City, Iowa 52242
Beth Kerr (55), School of Physical and Health Education, University of Wash-
ington, Seattle, Washington 98105
James L. Knight, Jr. (205), School of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University,
West Lafayette, Indiana 47907
Ronald L. Knoll (117), Human Information-Processing Research Department,
Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974
Ronald G. Marteniuk (267), Department of Kinesiology, University of Waterloo,
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Stephen Monsell (117), Department of Experimental Psychology, University of
Oxford, Oxford OX1 30D, England
* Present address: Human Motor Learning and Performance Laboratory, University of
Windsor, Windsor, Ontario N9B 3P4, Canada
t Present address: School of Physical Education and Athletics, McMaster University, Hamilton,
Ontario L8S 4K1, Canada
ix
χ LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Κ. M. Newell (41), Institute for Child Behavior and Development, University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois 61820
Richard W. Pew (71), Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., 50 Moulton Street, Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts 02138
Richard A. Schmidt (183), Department of Physical Education, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90007
Judith L. Smith (173), Department of Kinesiology and Brain Research Institute,
University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90405
Waneen Wyrick Spirduso (289), Department of Physical and Health Education,
University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712
George E. Stelmach (241), Motor Behavior Laboratory, University of Wisconsin—
Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706
Saul Sternberg (117), Human Information-Processing Research Department, Bell
Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974
M. T. Turvey (1), Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs,
Connecticut 06268
Stephen A. Wallace (79), Department of Physical Education, University of Cali-
fornia at Davis, Davis, California 95616
Alan M. Wing (153), Medical Research Council, Applied Psychology Unit, 15
Chaucer Road, Cambridge CB2 2EF, England
Charles E. Wright (117), Human Information-Processing Research Department,
Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974
Howard N. Zelaznik (183), Department of Physical Education, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90007
Preface
The swing of the pendulum back toward the study of the basic processes that
subserve behavior is nowhere as apparent as in the theoretical shift observed in
motor behavior research since the late 1960s. The study of skill acquisition and
motor control is one of the most rapidly expanding areas in psychology and neuro-
physiology. This research expansion has been brought about by the interest gen-
erated from new approaches to rather old problems that now focus not only on
the effector responses, but on the entire processing system. Rather than viewing
only a small part of total behavior, contemporary approaches to motor behavior
are stressing a complete conceptualization of behavior through the description
of the mental operations that characterize motor acts. It has become clear to all
serious students of motor behavior that basic to the understanding of how motor
learning takes place is a thorough knowledge of the function of the central
nervous system. As a result, the marked growth has been accompanied by changes
in experimental paradigms and theoretical postulations. While it was as recent
as the late 1960s that motor behaviorists searched for the empirical relations that
governed learning, performance, retention, and transfer behavior, contemporary
motor behavior scientists are seeking an understanding of how the brain functions
during the processes of learning, control, and memory.
This volume provides an organized and up-to-date picture of the current status
of the theoretical and technical developments in the field of motor behavior; and
will be of interest both to the advanced student in the field as well as to anyone
possessing a basic scientific background.
This book grew indirectly out of a 2-day symposium held under the auspices of
the University of Wisconsin—Madison Motor Behavior Laboratory and sponsored
by the Committee on Institutional Cooperation for the Big Ten Universities and
the Dean's office, School of Education, University of Wisconsin—Madison. As
with most conferences, it began with only the general topic and the invited
speakers fixed. Everything else, the nature of the presentations, the exact cover-
age of the topics, and the overall format of the conference, developed spon-
taneously. Therefore, this volume is what it is not because of careful planning
on my part, but rather because of the different paths taken by the contributors.
xi
xii PREFACE
The purpose of this book is to disseminate the theoretical ideas and empirical
findings of a small group of scientists who are actively engaged in motor be-
havior research. The authors point out and define problems in need of further
study in the hope that this will stimulate further research in this area.
The fourteen chapters are not grouped in any manner. Each chapter presents
a comprehensive up-to-date review of the pertinent literature. The volume as a
whole represents a good blend of theory and empirical data on motor control and
learning. Some of the early chapters discuss the several theoretical issues sur-
rounding skill acquisition. However, for the most part the chapters focus on motor
programming topics including the nature and significance of preparation, rapid
movement sequences, attentional demands, and sensorimotor integration in vol-
untary movements. These chapters combine to give an excellent overview of the
motor programming area and raise some rather controversial points as well.
Editing a book of this nature involves a cooperative venture between the con-
tributors, the editor, and the publisher. I am indebted to many for their efforts
on this volume especially to the busy and often overcommitted scientists who
took the time to express their ideas in a clear and concise manner, to Academic
Press who so willingly and efficiently went about publishing this book, and to
Virginia Diggles for her efforts to steer this project through much detail, which
kept me from giving up the laborious task long ago. Finally, I would like to offer
my sincere appreciation to all those in my Motor Behavior Laboratory who sacri-
ficed their time to critique many of the chapters.
1
Skill Acquisition: An Event Approach
with Special Reference to Searching
for the Optimum of a Function
of Several Variables
Carol A. Fowler
M. T. Turvey
I. Introduction 2
//. Motor Tasks, Acquisition Processes, and Actors: A
General Orientation 2
A. A Parallel between Evolution and Learning 2
B. The Actor as a Mimicking Automaton 4
C. Summary 6
///. Defining the Domain of Skill Acquisition for a Theorist 6
A. Events as Significant Units of Observation in a
Theory of Skilled Action 8
B. An Appropriate Level of Description of Events,
Actors, and Environments 9
C. Concluding Remarks: Increasing Controllable Degrees
of Freedom so as to Secure Certain Reactive Forces 17
IV. On Converting Biokincmatic Free Variables into a
Controllable System 20
A. Three Intuitions Relating to Action Problems 21
B. The Experimental Task 4 2
C. A Model of Closed-Loop Motor Control: Powers, 1973 26
D. Quantitative Knowledge of Results Is Equivocal
in Hierarchical Closed-Loop Systems 29
E. Searching the Two-Variable Space: The Ravine Method 31
F. Searching the Two-Variable Space: Sensitivity to Rate
of Change and Rate of Rate of Change 32
G. Concluding Remarks 36
Reference Notes 37
References 38
This work was supported by NIH grant HD01994 and NSF gram NSI3617 to Haskins
Laboratories.
1
Information Processing in Copyright © 1978 by Academic Press, Inc.
Motor Control and Learning All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
ISBN 0-12-665960-5
2 CAROL A. FOWLER AND M. T. TURVEY
I. Introduction
Our chapter divides into three parts. The first is a roughly hewn statement of
the general orientation we wish to take toward the problem of skill acquisition.
The second part develops a level of analysis that, in our view, is optimal for the
examination of the problem; essentially, it is an ecological level of analysis that
promotes the event rather than the performer as the minimal system that will
permit an adequate explanation of the regulation and acquisition of skilled ac-
tivity. The principal claims of the first two parts are highlighted in the third and
final part through a detailed examination of a specific but prototypical coordina-
tion problem, namely, the problem of how one learns optimally to constrain an
aggregate of relatively independent muscles so as to regulate a simple change in
a single variable.
II. Motor Tasks, Acquisition Processes, and Actors:
A General Orientation
It is prudent to preface a theoretical analysis of learning by some general com-
ments on what the incipient theorist takes to be the nature of tasks that are
learned, the nature of the processes that support the learning, and the nature of
the agent doing the learning. In the vocabulary of Shaw and Mclntyre (1974),
those three topics refer, respectively, to the three primary analytic concepts of
psychology, namely, the what, how, and who concepts. One can argue that this
set of analytic concepts is closed, that is, that the concepts are logically co-implica-
tive (Shaw & Mclntyre, 1974; Turvey & Prindle, 1977). The closure of the set
is illustrated by the following example.
The degree of hardness of a sheet of metal tells us something about the nature of
the saw we must use to cut it (i.e., something about what is to be done); a blueprint
or pattern must be selected in the light of what can be cut from the materials with a
given degree of tolerance (i.e., how it is to be done); while both of these factors must
enter into our equations to determine the amount of work that must be done to com-
plete the job within a reasonable amount of time. This latter information provides a
job description that hopefully gets an equivalence class of existing machines rather
than a class that might accomplish the feat in principle but not in practice (i.e., implies
the nature of the who or what required to do the task) [Shaw & Mclntyre, 1974,
p. 311].
A. A Parallel between Evolution and Learning
In search of a general orientation to the nature of tasks, processes, and agents
as they bear on the issue of skill acquisition, we are drawn to the parallel between
a species participating in the slow processes of evolution and an individual animal
participating in the comparatively rapid process of learning.
1. SKILL ACQUISITION: AN EVENT APPROACH 3
From a perspective that encompasses the whole evolving world of living systems,
any given species appears to be a "special-purpose device" whose salient proper-
ties are those that distinguish the given species from other species. These salient
properties, synchronically described, mark the state of adaptation of the species to
the special and relatively invariant properties of its environment. In the course of
time the species maintains its special attunement by coupling its evolution to that
of its changing environment.
If the perspective is considerably narrower, encompassing only the lifetime and
habitat of an individual animal, then the system being observed appears to be a
"general-purpose device" to the extent that the individual animal can enter into
various temporary relationships with its environment. In the course of ontogeny
the individual animal adds to its repertoire of skilled acts.
It is roughly apparent that the "evolution" in ontogeny of a skilled act parallels
the evolution of a species. Adaptation to an environment is synonymous with the
evolution of special biological and behavioral features that are compatible (sym-
metrical) with special features of the environment. Similarly, we may claim that
facility with a skill is synonymous with the ontogeny of special coordinative
features that are compatible with the special features of the skill. Insofar as an
environment has structure that provides the criteria for adaptations, so we may
expect, not surprisingly, a task to have structure that provides the source of con-
straint on skilled solutions. And insofar as a species is said to be a particular
biological attunement to a particular niche, we may wish to say, perhaps curiously,
that the individual animal, as skilled performer, is a particular attunement to the
particular task it performs skillfully. This last and cryptic parallel must be com-
mented on further, for aside from requiring clarification it contains within it a
potentially useful metaphor for the understanding of coordinated activity.
Consider the proposition that an animal and its environment are not logically
separable, that one always implies the other. An animal's environment should not
be construed in terms of the variables of physics as we commonly understand
them; a considerably more useful conception is in terms of affordances (Gibson,
1977). An affordance is not easily defined, but the following may be taken as a
working approximation: "The affordance of anything is a specific combination
of the properties of its substance and its surfaces taken with reference to an
animal [Gibson, 1977, p. 67]." Thus, for example, the combination of the surface
and substance properties of rigidity, levelness, flatness, and extendedness identifies
a surface of support for the upright posture and locomotory activity of humans.
Put another way, an object or situation, as an invariant combination of surface
and substance variables, affords a certain activity for a given animal if and only
if there is a mutual compatability between the animal, on the one hand, and the
object or situation on the other.
Affordances are the aspects of the world to which adaptations occur. Conse-
quently, we can now identify the special features of the environment referred to
