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Moving to directly cued locations abolishes spatial interference during bimanual actions.
J Diedrichsen1, E Hazeltine, S Kennerley
1Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley 94720, USA. jdiedri@socrates.berkeley.edu
Psychological Science
|January 5, 2002
Summary
Bimanual movement interference arises from symbolic cue processing, not motor programming. Directly cued symmetric and nonsymmetric hand movements show no reaction time differences.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Motor Control
- Human Movement Science
Background:
- Bimanual movements often show interference when hands perform asymmetric actions.
- Understanding the source of this bimanual interference is crucial for motor control research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the origin of bimanual interference by comparing symmetric and nonsymmetric movements.
- To differentiate between interference in motor programming versus earlier cognitive stages.
Main Methods:
- Two experiments were conducted comparing symmetric and nonsymmetric movements (different amplitudes or directions).
- Target movements were cued either symbolically (letters) or directly (target locations).
- Reaction times were measured for all conditions.
Main Results:
- Symbolic cues led to longer reaction times for nonsymmetric movements compared to symmetric ones.
- Direct cues showed no difference in reaction times between symmetric and nonsymmetric movements.
- This suggests parallel programming of directly cued actions.
Conclusions:
- Bimanual interference is not solely due to spatial interference in motor programming.
- The cost of nonsymmetric movements likely stems from stimulus identification and response selection with symbolic cues.
- Directly cued actions can be programmed in parallel, bypassing symbolic processing bottlenecks.