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Intermanual interactions in discrete and periodic bimanual movements with same and different amplitudes

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Abstract

In two experiments we compared intermanual interactions in discrete and periodic movements with same and different amplitudes. In the first experiment there was only a weak amplitude assimilation in first cycles of movements with 1, 3, and 10 cycles, but a strong assimilation in later cycles. Whereas movement times of concurrent short-amplitude and long-amplitude movements were different in first cycles, in the later cycles they were essentially identical. In the second experiment the timed-response procedure was used to study the specification of same and different amplitudes of discrete reversal movements and periodic movements with three cycles. Differences in the time courses of amplitude specifications were only small. In periodic movements a dependence of amplitudes on the preparation interval was seen not only in the first cycles, but also in the later ones. However, in the later cycles the characteristic dependence of assimilation effects and intermanual correlations on the preparation interval was absent. Taken together, these findings strongly suggest that intermanual interactions arise transiently in the specification of both discrete and periodic movements, and that additional kinds of interactions become effective during execution of periodic movements.

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Notes

  1. There may be concerns about the generalizeability of the findings obtained with a task which can be performed only by a certain proportion of people. Task variants of the timed-response procedure are easily of this kind. Regarding the generalizeability of the findings at least two considerations are essential. First, it is not intended to generalize performance characteristics. The very idea appears strange that performance characteristics should be generalized to the subset of the population who cannot perform the task. Instead we claim generalizeability of inferences based on the observed performance data, in particular of the inferences related to underlying mechanisms. Such mechanisms should be present even though in some people a certain task cannot be performed; in principle they should reveal their effects in other tasks as well (cf. Heuer 1988). Second, a prerequisite for this kind of generalizeability is that the selection of participants is not based on those performance characteristics which are critical for the inferences (e.g. the transient amplitude assimilation at short preparation intervals). This was clearly not the case in the present experiment.

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  1. Institut für Arbeitsphysiologie an der Universität Dortmund , Ardeystraße 67, 44139, Dortmund, Germany

    Herbert Heuer & Wolfhard Klein

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  1. Herbert Heuer
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  2. Wolfhard Klein
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Correspondence to Herbert Heuer.

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This research was supported by grant He 1187/14-1 of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. We thank Barbara Herbst, Holger Küper, and Kevin Schepers for their support in setting up and running the experiments. The paper has profited from helpful comments of Jörn Diedrichsen and an anonymous reviewer.

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Heuer, H., Klein, W. Intermanual interactions in discrete and periodic bimanual movements with same and different amplitudes. Exp Brain Res 167, 220–237 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-005-0015-0

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