A theory is presented to explain how accurate, single-joint movements are controlled. The theory applies to movements across different distances, with different inertial loads, toward targets of different widths over a wide range of experimentally manipulated velocities. The theory is based on three propositions. (1) Movements are planned according to “strategies” of which there are at least two: a speed-insensitive (SI) and a speed-sensitive (SS) one. (2) These strategies can be equated with sets of rules for performing diverse movement tasks. (...) The choice between SI and SS depends on whether movement speed and/or movement time (and hence appropriate muscle forces) must be constrained to meet task requirements. (3) The electromyogram can be interpreted as a low-pass filtered version of the controlling signal to the motoneuron pools. This controlling signal can be modelled as a rectangular excitation pulse in which modulation occurs in either pulse amplitude or pulse width. Movements to different distances and with loads are controlled by the SI strategy, which modulates pulse width. Movements in which speed must be explicitly regulated are controlled by the SS strategy, which modulates pulse amplitude. The distinction between the two movement strategies reconciles many apparent conflicts in the motor control literature. (shrink)

The information age can be dated to the work of Norbert Wiener and Claude Shannon in the 1940s. Their work on cybernetics and information theory, and many subsequent developments, had a profound influence on reshaping the field of psychology from what it was prior to the 1950s. Contemporaneously, advances also occurred in experimental design and inferential statistical testing stemming from the work of Ronald Fisher, Jerzy Neyman, and Egon Pearson. These interdisciplinary advances from outside of psychology provided the conceptual and (...) methodological tools for what is often called the cognitive revolution but is more accurately described as the information-processing revolution. Cybernetics set the stage with the idea that everything ranging from neurophysiological mechanisms to societal activities can be modeled as structured control systems with feedforward and feedback loops. Information theory offered a way to quantify entropy and information, and promoted theorizing in terms of information flow. Statistical theory provided means for making scientific inferences from the results of controlled experiments and for conceptualizing human decision making. With those three pillars, a cognitive psychology adapted to the information age evolved. The growth of technology in the information age has resulted in human lives being increasingly interweaved with the cyber environment, making cognitive psychology an essential part of interdisciplinary research on such interweaving. Continued engagement in interdisciplinary research at the forefront of technology development provides a chance for psychologists not only to refine their theories but also to play a major role in the advent of a new age of science. (shrink)

Previous research has repeatedly demonstrated that providing learners with self-control over their feedback schedules enhances motor skill learning. Increased information processing under self-control conditions has been shown to contribute to these benefits. However, the timing of critical information processing for self-control participants during the acquisition of continuous tasks is unknown. The present study was designed to enhance clarity related to this issue. Participants learned a continuous tracing task under self-control (SC) or yoked (YK) conditions. Groups of participants also completed a (...) secondary cognitive load task either during or after the execution of each primary task trial. Results showed enhanced learning for SC compared to YK participants who did not complete the cognitive load task. However, this benefit was eliminated for SC participants who completed the cognitive load task either during or after the primary task. These findings suggest that effective information processing both during and after continuous task execution is critical for reaping the benefits of self-controlled practice. Further interpretations and implications of these findings as well as suggestions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

Bouts of exercise performed either prior to or immediately following study periods enhance encoding and learning. Empirical evidence supporting the benefits of interventions that simultaneously pair physical activity with material to be learned is not conclusive, however. A narrative, theory-based review of dual-task experiments evaluated studies in terms of arousal theories, attention theories, cognitive-energetic theories, and entrainment theories. The pattern of the results of these studies suggests that cognitive-motor interference can either impair or enhance memory of semantic information and the (...) manner in which physical activity impacts working memory within executive processing appears to explain disparate outcomes. The integration and timing of physical movements in concert with the type of information to be encoded and remembered appears to be a critical requirement for learning. These observations have implications for the role of physical activity in education, rehabilitation, and gerontological settings. (shrink)

Background: Differential learning is a motor learning method characterized by high amounts of variability during practice and is claimed to provide the learner with a higher learning rate than other methods. However, some controversy surrounds DL theory, and to date, no overview exists that compares the effects of DL to other motor learning methods.Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of DL in comparison to other motor learning methods in the acquisition and retention phase.Design: Systematic review and exploratory meta-analysis.Methods: PubMed, Web of (...) Science, and Google Scholar were searched until February 3, 2020. To be included, studies had to be experiments where the DL group was compared to a control group engaged in a different motor learning method, studies had to describe the effects on one or more measures of performance in a skill or movement task, and the study report had to be published as a full paper in a journal or as a book chapter.Results: Twenty-seven studies encompassing 31 experiments were included. Overall heterogeneity for the acquisition phase as well as for the retention phase was large, and risk of bias was high. The meta-analysis showed an overall small effect size of 0.26 [0.10, 0.42] in the acquisition phase for participants in the DL group compared to other motor learning methods. In the retention phase, an overall medium effect size of 0.61 [0.30, 0.91] was observed for participants in the DL group compared to other motor learning methods.Discussion/Conclusion: Given the large amount of heterogeneity, limited number of studies, low sample sizes, low statistical power, possible publication bias, and high risk of bias in general, inferences about the effectiveness of DL would be premature. Even though DL shows potential to result in greater average improvements between pre- and post/retention test compared to non-variability-based motor learning methods, more high-quality research is needed before issuing such a statement. For robust comparisons on the relative effectiveness of DL to different variability-based motor learning methods, scarce and inconclusive evidence was found. (shrink)

Human agents draw a variety of inferences effortlessly, spontaneously, and with remarkable efficiency – as though these inferences were a reflexive response of their cognitive apparatus. Furthermore, these inferences are drawn with reference to a large body of background knowledge. This remarkable human ability seems paradoxical given the complexity of reasoning reported by researchers in artificial intelligence. It also poses a challenge for cognitive science and computational neuroscience: How can a system of simple and slow neuronlike elements represent a large (...) body of systemic knowledge and perform a range of inferences with such speed? We describe a computational model that takes a step toward addressing the cognitive science challenge and resolving the artificial intelligence paradox. We show how a connectionist network can encode millions of facts and rules involving n-ary predicates and variables and perform a class of inferences in a few hundred milliseconds. Efficient reasoning requires the rapid representation and propagation of dynamic bindings. Our model (which we refer to as SHRUTI) achieves this by representing (1) dynamic bindings as the synchronous firing of appropriate nodes, (2) rules as interconnection patterns that direct the propagation of rhythmic activity, and (3) long-term facts as temporal pattern-matching subnetworks. The model is consistent with recent neurophysiological evidence that synchronous activity occurs in the brain and may play a representational role in neural information processing. The model also makes specific psychologically significant predictions about the nature of reflexive reasoning. It identifies constraints on the form of rules that may participate in such reasoning and relates the capacity of the working memory underlying reflexive reasoning to biological parameters such as the lowest frequency at which nodes can sustain synchronous oscillations and the coarseness of synchronization. (shrink)

Engineers use neural networks to control systems too complex for conventional engineering solutions. To examine the behavior of individual hidden units would defeat the purpose of this approach because it would be largely uninterpretable. Yet neurophysiologists spend their careers doing just that! Hidden units contain bits and scraps of signals that yield only arcane hints about network function and no information about how its individual units process signals. Most literature on single-unit recordings attests to this grim fact. On the other (...) hand, knowing a system's function and describing it with elegant mathematics tell one very little about what to expect of interneuronal behavior. Examples of simple networks based on neurophysiology are taken from the oculomotor literature to suggest how single-unit interpretability might decrease with increasing task complexity. It is argued that trying to explain how any real neural network works on a cell-by-cell, reductionist basis is futile and we may have to be content with trying to understand the brain at higher levels of organization. (shrink)

Participants struck 500 golf balls to a concealed target. Outcome feedback was presented at the subjective or objective threshold of awareness of each participant or at a supraliminal threshold. Participants who received fully perceptible feedback learned to strike the ball onto the target, as did participants who received feedback that was only marginally perceptible . Participants who received feedback that was not perceptible showed no learning. Upon transfer to a condition in which the target was unconcealed, performance increased in both (...) the subjective and the objective threshold condition, but decreased in the supraliminal condition. In all three conditions, participants reported minimal declarative knowledge of their movements, suggesting that deliberate hypothesis testing about how best to move in order to perform the motor task successfully was disrupted by the impoverished disposition of the visual outcome feedback. It was concluded that sub-optimally perceptible visual feedback evokes implicit processes. (shrink)