Stimulus-target compatibility for reaching movements

Neuropsychologia, 1984

Acta Psychologica, 2001

The present study was designed to examine the hypothesis that stimulus±response arrangements with high ideomotor compatibility lead to substantial compatibility eects even in simple response tasks. In Experiment 1, participants executed pre-instructed ®nger movements in response to compatible and incompatible ®nger movements. A pronounced reaction time advantage was found for compatible as compared to incompatible trials. Experiment 2 revealed a much smaller compatibility eect for less ideomotor-compatible object movements compared to ®nger movements. Experiment 3 presented normal stimuli (hand upright) and ipped stimuli (hand upside-down). Two components were found to contribute to the compatibility eect, a dynamic spatial compatibility component (related to movement directions) and an ideomotor component (related to movement types). The implications of these results for theories about stimulus±response compatibility (SRC) as well as for theories about imitation are discussed. Ó

The spatial-size association of response code (SSARC) effect refers to the finding of better performance of the left hand to small stimuli and with the right hand to large stimuli, as compared to the reverse mapping. In the present study, we investigated which response encoding is responsible for the emergence of the SSARC effect. We observed a SSARC effect only for bimanual responses but not for unimanual responses with either hand, indicating that the responses are coded relative to the body midline. Further, we observed a SSARC effect with parallel arms but not with crossed arms, suggesting that both the anatomical side of the effector and its external spatial position contribute to the response code. However, using a reaching task as compared to key presses, the SSARC effect followed the arms, suggesting that the crucial spatial response code refers more strongly to the anatomical side of the effector but not the external spatial response position. These findings document a stro...

It is solidly established that unequal stimulus frequencies lead to faster responses to the more likely stimulus; however, the effect of this probability bias on response inhibition is still debated. To tackle this issue, we administered two versions of the stop-signal task to 18 right-handed healthy subjects. In one version, we manipulated the frequency of right and left targets appearance when subjects were required to produce speeded responses (no-stop trials) with the right arm, whereas stop signals occurred with equal frequencies after right or left targets (no-stop signal bias). In the other version, we manipulated the frequency of appearance of stop signals after right or left targets, whereas nostop trials toward right or left targets had the same frequency (stop-signal bias). Surprisingly, we found a very modest, if any, increase in response readiness toward the more frequent stimulus. However, the no-stop signal bias had an effect on the speed of inhibitory control, as subjects were always faster to suppress a movement toward the side where targets were less likely to occur. Differently, the stop-signal bias had a much more powerful effect. In fact, subjects were faster to withhold movements toward the side where targets were more frequent, while they exhibited longer reaction times for reaches toward the more likely targets. Overall, these results suggest that action preparation and action inhibition are independent competing processes, but subjects tend to place automatically greater importance on the stop task.

PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH-PSYCHOLOGISCHE FORSCHUNG, 2003

Simultaneous reaching movements made with the two hands can show a considerable increase in reaction time (RT) when they differ in terms of direction or extent, compared to when the movements involve the same direction and extent. This cost has been attributed to cross-talk in the specification of the motor parameters for the two hands. However, a recent study . Psychological Science, 12, 493-498] indicates that when reaching movements are cued by the onset of the target endpoint, no compatibility effects are observed. To determine why directly cued movements are immune from interference, we varied the stimulus onset asynchrony for the two movements and used different combinations of directly cued and symbolically cued movements. In two experiments, compatibility effects were only observed when both movements were symbolically cued. No difference was found between compatible and incompatible movements when both movements were directly cued or when one was directly cued and the other was symbolically cued. These results indicate that interference is not related to the specification of movement parameters but instead emerges from processes associated with response selection. Moreover, the data suggest that cross-talk, when present, primarily shortens the RT of the second movement on compatible trials rather than lengthening this RT on incompatible trials.

The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A, 2000

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Brain and Cognition, 2005

The goal of the present investigation was to explore the possible expression of hemispheric-specific processing during the planning and execution of a bimanual reaching task. Participants (N = 9) completed 80 bimanual reaching movements (requiring simultaneous, bilateral production of arm movements) to peripherally presented targets while selectively attending to either their left or right hand. Further, targets were presented in spatially compatible (ipsilateral to the aiming limb) and incompatible (contralateral to the aiming limb) response contexts. It was found that the left hand exhibited temporal superiority over the right hand in the response planning phase of bimanual reaching, indicating a left hand/right hemisphere advantage in the preparation of a bimanual response. During response execution, and consistent with the view that interhemispheric processing time or biomechanical constraints generate temporal delays, longer movement times were observed in response to spatially incompatible target positions. However, no hemisphere-specific benefit was demonstrated for response execution. Based on these findings, we propose lateralized processing is present at the time of response planning (i.e., left hand/right hemisphere processing advantage); however, lateralized specialization appears to be annulled during dynamic execution of a bimanual reaching task.

Cognitive Neuropsychology, 2008

The ability of rapidly adapting our motor behaviour in order to face the unpredictable changes in the surrounding environment is fundamental for survival. To achieve such a high level of efficiency our motor system has to assess continuously the context in which it acts, gathering all available information that can be relevant for planning goal-oriented movements. One still-debated aspect of movement organization is the nature and timing of motor planning. While motor plans are often taken to be concerned with the setting of kinematic parameters as a function of perceptual and motor factors, it has been suggested that higher level, cognitive factors may also affect planning. To explore this issue further, we asked 18 right-handed human participants to perform speeded hand-reaching movement toward a visual target in two different experimental settings, a reaction time (RT) paradigm (go-only task) and a countermanding paradigm. In both tasks participants executed the same movements, but in the countermanding task no-stop trials were randomly intermixed with stop trials. In stop trials participants were required to withhold the ongoing movement whenever a stop signal was shown. It is known that the presence of stop trials induces a consistent increase of the RTs of no-stop trials with respect to the RTs of go-only trials. However, nothing is known about a similar effect for movement times (MTs). We found that RTs and MTs exhibit opposing tendencies, so that a decrease in the RT correspond to an increase in the MT and vice versa. This tendency was present in all our participants and significant in 90% of them. Furthermore we found a moderate, but again very consistent, anticorrelation between RTs and MTs on a trial-by-trial base. These findings are consistent with strategic changes in movement programmes for the very same movements under different cognitive contexts, requiring different degrees of feedback-driven control during movement.

Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1999

Within the area of simulated (imagined) versus actual movement research, investigators have discovered that mentally simulated movements, like real actions, are controlled primarily by the hemispheres contralateral to the simulated limb. Furthermore, evidence points to a left-brain advantage for accuracy of simulated movements. With this information it could be suggested that, compared to left-handers, most right-handers would have an advantage. To test this hypothesis, strong right-and left-handers were compared on judgments of perceived reachability to visual targets lasting 150 ms in multiple locations of midline, right-and left-visual field (RVF/LVF). In reference to within group responses, we found no hemispheric or hand use advantage for right-handers. Although left-handers revealed no hemispheric advantage, there was a significant hand effect, favoring the non-dominant limb, most notably in LVF. This finding is explained in regard to a possible interference effect for left-handers, not shown for right-handers. Overall, left-handers displayed significantly more errors across hemispace. Therefore, it appears that when comparing hand groups, a left-hemisphere advantage favoring right-handers is plausible.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2007

Investigations of bimanual movements have shed considerable insight on the constraints underlying our ability to perform coordinated actions. One prominent limitation is evident when people are required to produce reaching movements in which the two trajectories are of different amplitudes and/or directions. This effect, however, is only obtained when the movements are cued symbolically (e.g., letters indicate target locations); these planning costs are absent when the target locations are directly cued . The present experiments test whether the absence of planning costs under the latter condition is due to the perceptual similarity of the direct cues. The results demonstrate that measures of response planning and execution do not depend on the perceptual similarity of the direct cues. Limitations in our ability to perform distinct actions with the two hands appear to reflect interactions related to response selection involving the translation of symbolic cues into their associated movements rather than arise from interactions associated with perception, motor programming, and motor execution.