Abstract
The influence of monitoring-pressure on the performance of anti-phase and in-phase bimanual coordination was examined. The two bimanual patterns were produced under no-monitoring and monitoring-pressure conditions at self-paced frequencies. Anti-phase coordination was always less stable than in-phase coordination, with or without monitoring. When performed under monitoring-pressure, the coordination patterns were performed with less variability in relative phase for both patterns across a range of self-paced movement frequencies compared to performance without monitoring. Thus, while monitoring-pressure did induce a behavioral change, it consisted of performance stabilization rather than degradation, a finding inconsistent with explicit-monitoring theory. However, the findings are consistent with the theory of coordination dynamics and studies that have revealed increased stability for the system’s intrinsic dynamics as a result of attentional focus and intentional control.
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Notes
The feedback telling participants that their performance was “not good” may be viewed as a form of negative feedback. However, participants were not informed that “not good” meant large error, moving too slow, producing too large a movement, etc. Thus, the information was not directed at a specific aspect of the coordination pattern to change or alter. The information was given within the context of monitoring pressure, i.e., this is why you must be monitored by an expert, and when taken together, the instructions were directed at increasing pressure around being monitored by an expert.
A reviewer suggested that an ANCOVA (analysis of covariance) with movement frequency as a covariate would be another way to analysis the relationship between movement frequency and standard deviation instead of using the MVF ratio. An ANCOVA of the relative phase variability data with movement frequency as a covariate and Monitoring and Pattern as factors produced the following results. Movement frequency was a significant covariate, F (1, 19) = 33.5, p < .0001, \({\eta }_{p}^{2}\)=.064. The ANCOVA also found a significant effect of Pattern, F (1, 19) \({\eta }_{p}^{2}\) = 11.2, p < 0.01, = 0.29, and a significant effect of Monitoring, F (1, 19) = 7.9, p = 0.011, \({\eta }_{p}^{2}\) = 0.29. Relative phase variability was larger for the anti-phase (Mn = 20°) compared to the in-phase (Mn = 15°) pattern in block 3. This Pattern effect is consistent with the analysis of the variability data without movement frequency as a covariate. The ANCOVA monitoring effect revealed that variability was smaller under the monitoring-pressure (Mn = 16°) compared to the no-monitoring pressure condition (Mn = 20°). This monitoring effect was not significant in the ANOVA analysis of the block 3 relative phase variability data, however, the monitoring effect was significant in the ANOVA analysis of the MVF ratio. These results show that movement frequency did contribute to relative phase variability in a significant way in this experiment. This is an expected finding, since extensive research has shown these bimanual patterns, especially anti-phase, to be sensitive to movement frequency changes when explicitly controlled with pacing signals.
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Buchanan, J.J., Park, I., Chen, J. et al. Bimanual coordination patterns are stabilized under monitoring-pressure. Exp Brain Res 235, 1909–1918 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-016-4869-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-016-4869-0