Module 19 - Lecture 12 - Motor Control Flashcards
Define Motor control
The study of the nature and control of known movements.
How do you design an experiment to understand motor control from a psychomotor approach
Psychomotor approach –> more in “cognitive psychology” It is an applied scientific method where essentially you would want to measure a performance of a task. (because we are thinking the control of the movement) Then we would want to manipulate the aspects of the task and understand… How this would change the behaviour that we were observing If we are able to show that there is some manipulation that causes an effect in the performance, we would then make some inferences of what may be inducing this changes!!! –> you may develop your own model The steps would be the following: Measure task performance Manipulate aspects of the task Study the behavioural effect Make inferences about the underlying models of control
How do you design an experiment to understand motor control from a physiology approach - neurophysiology?
Cause and effect –> you can either excite a structure or do a controlled lesion (like surgery) of neurophysiological structures. And then you can observe what the effect would be, to come to a conclusion of what the structure contributes to. Observational - with more of an epidemiological approach - with modern radiography = MRi. WE can simultaneously measure motor function while individuals complete tasks = we can observe the changes of the performance
What is the definition of factors that explain an observed movement (ie task, individual, and environment)?
Individual: Anatomical, physiological and cognitive abilities of the “actor” Environment: Area around individual where task is performed - Could be predictable or unpredictable - Relevant or non-relevant features Task: End point or goal “retrieve cup” - Has a variety of “sub-goals” or “dimensions” that can be measured - Spatial vs temporal, outcome vs process, integration of parts (discrete vs serial vs continuous), cognitive vs motor, closed vs open, self vs external pace
What are the 3 parts of the information processing model? Define them
Three fundamental stage
- Stimulus-identification (Perception)
- Sensory information from the environment (internal and external) to detect and identify a stimulus
- Response- Selection
- Decide what to do (this can be nothing)
- Response-Program/execution
- What we must prepare and initiate to achieve our selected response as a “skilled motor behaviour”
What is “short term sensory storage”.
Sensory information is stored in sensory memory just long enough to be transferred to short-term memory. Humans have five traditional senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch and all sensory signals travel to the brain. All sensory information (that travels through AP) can be received by the thalamus and go to primary sensory cortex areas.
What is the capacity of the short term sensory storage?
Almost limitless capacity → everything that is going on in the environnement we can sense.
How long does the short term sensory storage last?
The sensory information is accepted but we do not have much “record or memory of it”
Last only 250 ms
Is the short term sensory storage perceived consciously?
The sensory information has the potential for “conscious recognition” or “perception” by the brain.
But the capacity to “perceive” is limited, therefore not all sensations reach perception
What is the definition for attention and the two general things one attends to?
Attention is a filter with a finite capacity that controls access of some sensations at the cost of not perceiving others.
- Example of attention, if you are trying to figure out the identity of the orange.. You might not notice the apples around it = attention has a cost. → refer to the image on the slides to know exactly what I mean
- Attention increases the “salience” to enhance sensory information (louder, clearer, faster)
Two general things we attends to:
- “Spaces” (an actual area where something is going on) or “ identify features” (ex. Someone’s speech, cadence)
Define endogenous and exogenous attention.
Endogenous attention = top-down = we select what to attend to fulfill a desire
Exogenous attention = bottom-up = the stimulus has natural salience that captures attention
What does exogenous attention suggest about short term sensory storage?
Bottom-up attention suggests evidence of some processing in sensory storage.
Recall that attention is our ability to perceive some sensation at the cost of other types of sensation… It does suggest that in my background if something more exciting comes along, we may have learned some natural salience and therefore it suggests that there is some kind of processing that does occur within our sensory storage system (that limited one), that can just grab our attention!!!
How does attention to sensations lead to a meaningful element for perception?
The sensations that our body is receiving is being “packaged” as a pattern (recall associativity) contacting a memory from our past, and that memory is known as a “long term memory”. And it is the “long term memory” that is meaningful and we can work on; not the individual sensations themselves. This moves the sensory information into “working memory” to be worked upon.
- This process reduces the amount of resources you need for attention
- The memory starts to put everything into context
Define the signal detection theory.
Signal detection theory: Detection theory or signal detection theory is a means to measure the ability to differentiate between information-bearing patterns (called stimulus in living organisms, signal in machines) and random patterns that distract from the information (called noise, consisting of background stimuli and random activity of the detection machine and of the nervous system of the operator).
How does the signal detection theory assists with “contacting a memory”?
How does this theory assist with “contacting a memory”:
- Sensory information is ambiguous and ambiguity can be resolved by bottom up and top down factors.
- Bottom-up = clarity (sharpness/contrast of stimulus) + intensity (magnitude of the stimulus
- Top-down = prior knowledge for “patterning”
- The faster you resolve ambiguity the faster you contact the memory for information processing.
How does memory patterning come to be (ie would it be known right away or is it “learned”)?
How does patterning aid in perception?
- Memory patterning In psychology and cognitive neuroscience, pattern recognition describes a cognitive process that matches information from a stimulus with information retrieved from memory.
- Pattern recognition occurs when information from the environment is received and entered into short-term memory, causing automatic activation of a specific content of long-term memory. An early example of this is learning the alphabet in order. When a carer repeats ‘A, B, C’ multiple times to a child, utilizing the pattern recognition, the child says ‘C’ after he/she hears ‘A, B’ in order. Recognizing patterns allows us to predict and expect what is coming. The process of pattern recognition involves matching the information received with the information already stored in the brain. Making the connection between memories and information perceived is a step of pattern recognition called identification. Pattern recognition requires repetition of experience. Semantic memory, which is used implicitly and subconsciously is the main type of memory involved with recognition
- This means that memorizing a “pattern” is learned over time but provide contrast to stimulus, a working memory is limited to 4-7 chunks → a chunk can be a meaningful package/pattern of information.
- Once the association is made we benefit from an improved ability to resolve the ambiguity of the stimulus.
How is memory patterned evidenced in the De Groot study?
Evidence for Chunking Theory. One of the main pieces of evidence supporting the chunking theory is the chess experiment carried out by De Groot (1965). In this pretty simple experiment, De Groot was able to show the difference in the way that experts and novices reconstruct certain aspects of chess in their minds.
*If you present the chest board to better players –> when the chest board is set up as a partially played game = can now do meaningful patterns = strategies that you can make over time
*If you present the chessboard with no pattern in mind, simply putting the pieces at different places -> less able to retain the pattern = evidence to support the theory of MEANINGFUL PATTERNS
What processes occur during response selection?
We start by selecting the “appropriate action” → which is essentially thinking, then planning and then deciding.
The way we do this is by having attention keeps the perception of working memory. And this overlap can contact additional memories. This provides information of previous goals and outcomes (rewards and costs) to predict consequences of an action.
What happens when you have more choices to choose from?
Choosing how to act takes time, and therefore having more choices slows us down.
What happens when the number of choices doubles?
When the number of choices double, the reaction time doubles
This is known from the Hick-Hyman’s Law → Which states that increasing the number of choices will increase the decision time logarithmically = RT = A + B *log2(N)
What is anticipation and how does it impact attention and response selection?
- Anticipation = it is information gained before signal to know where to attend or the correct response.
- With anticipation, you can speed up the process, because we have already undergone this selection process, at an earlier period of time that gives us the illusion of faster reaction time.
- How does anticipation impact attention → it is faster since we know what we should be paying attention to
- How does anticipation impact response selection → it is also faster since we know what the desired response we are to do before the cue.
How can automaticity develop?
- Automaticity can be developed with experience we “anticipate” logical guesses (example, soccer ball) because sensory information is in “packages” and we are “association machines”. The new strategies that we learn with experience/practice or some type of learning exposure are the “cue” we may have learned them “implicitly”.
- That being said, a highly practiced stimulus response pairing becomes “automatic” through the cerebral cortex.
- Example = the alphabet.
- Sensation has a singular linked perception/outcome
- We can create this automaticity due to plasticity being the “highway”
Define the process of motor ideation.
Working memory for “motor programs”
Contemplates multiple motor programs but only one will be executed
What is executed could be a series of motor programs executed in sequence (serial tasks)
What is a general motor program?
- It is a unique form of long term memory.
- Represent a general class of movement coding for “relative timing coordination” → like direction changes.
- A motor program = relative time = ratio (% total)
