Abstract
Traditional approaches to research on bimanual coordination focus on sensorimotor interference, motor programming, and effects of perception and feedback guidance; surprisingly, little is known about high-level conceptual constraints that might unify separate movements into coordinated actions. We investigated two possible forms of high-level unifying representations on anticipatory control (i.e., reaction time: RT) in two-limb (bimanual) movements. Specifically, we adapted a paradigmatic bimanual task involving reaching to targets by adding two novel manipulations. One involved a visual-perceptual manipulation in which target-objects were presented either separately (i.e., two circles) or as a unified object (i.e., two circles connected by a bar). The other involved variants on language representation to elicit separate action plans (i.e., separate instructional commands joined by ‘and’) or unified action plans (i.e., a single verb applying to both hands). Typical forms of sensorimotor interference were virtually abolished when these unifying constraints were available. These findings provide strong support for the theoretical account that unifying conceptual representations are primary forms of bimanual constraint. Findings further suggest that the organization and content of the language used to form action representations can strongly influence anticipatory planning of bimanual actions.
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Notes
Here, we use the term ‘representation’ in a rather general form. Our view is that representations of actions initially develop through interactions of the actor (agent), environment, task, and situation. Thus, perceptual symbols closely aligned with action representations are in this sense modal, in line with recent views of embodied cognition (Glenberg and Kaschak 2002). We view representations created from the use of arbitrary symbols (i.e., a letter representing what action to make) as reflecting further adaptations of basic representational faculties of the brain.
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Franz, E.A., McCormick, R. Conceptual unifying constraints override sensorimotor interference during anticipatory control of bimanual actions. Exp Brain Res 205, 273–282 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-010-2365-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-010-2365-5