Motor response recognition

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that estimation of response outcome involves the independent processes of evaluating response-produced feedback stimuli and associating a label from an interval scale to these stimuli. Ss practiced a linear positioning movement to a stop before estimating the movement distance either in in. or mm. and reproducing the movement in a single criterion test trial. The results supported the hypothesis. There was no difference between groups in movement error, while estimation errors for both groups were significantly greater than their respective movement errors. The smaller estimation error in the in. group suggested that attaching a label to the response-produced feedback is itself a learned phenomenon.