Is the organisation of goal-directed action modality specific? A common temporal structure

With the help of kinematic analysis, the temporal organization of the complex daily activity 'drinking from a bottle with a glass' was described in detail. The analysis focused on the sequential action structure, the prehensile acts, and the bimanual coordination as well as on the effect of different instruction modalities on these parameters to explore the underlying representation for this complex action. Movements of the two arms were recorded in three-dimensional space with the help of an optoelectronic device in 12 normal subjects under four conditions: (1) action pantomime after verbal instruction; (2) action imitation after observation of the action performed by the experimenter without the objects; (3) action pantomime while seeing, but not touching the objects; and finally (4) action execution with objects. Despite high execution variability, the temporal structure of the action could be precisely described by the relative duration and peak velocity of action segments, by the MGA-object size-correlation, and by linear regression analysis between the onsets of functionally related action segments. A similar structure of the action as characterized by these kinematic parameters was retained across different instruction modalities. Only when the action was executed with the objects, the interval between the movement onsets of either hand and the peak velocity of the manipulative acts were reduced, while no change was observed across the other three instruction modalities. This stability of the temporal structure suggests the existence of a level in the representation of an action where all the modalities converge.