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Multisensory action effects facilitate the performance of motor sequences
Mengkai Luan1, Heiko Maurer2, Arash Mirifar3
1Department of Sport and Health Sciences, Chair of Sport Psychology, Technische Universität Munich, Campus D - Georg-Brauchle-Ring 60/62, 80992, Munich, Germany. ge72mub@mytum.de.
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics
|November 2, 2020
Summary
Using multiple sensory inputs, like sound and visuals, significantly improves how quickly people learn and perform motor sequences. This audiovisual approach enhances action priming and strengthens sequential movements.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Human-Computer Interaction
Background:
- Contingent, distinct action effects positively influence motor sequence performance.
- Previous research demonstrated benefits of unimodal (auditory) task-irrelevant action effects on motor sequences.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of task-irrelevant action effects from multiple sensory modalities on motor sequence performance.
- To compare motor sequence performance across auditory, visual, and audiovisual conditions.
Main Methods:
- Participants performed motor sequences under three conditions: auditory (tones), visual (rectangles), or audiovisual (tones and rectangles).
- Key presses generated corresponding sensory feedback in each modality.
- Motor sequence initiation and execution were measured.
Main Results:
- The audiovisual group exhibited significant advantages in both motor sequence initiation and execution.
- Compared to unimodal conditions, audiovisual action effects led to faster performance.
Conclusions:
- Action effects engaging multiple sensory modalities enhance motor sequence performance more than unimodal effects.
- Multimodal sensory feedback can accelerate action priming and strengthen associations between successive actions.
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