Eleventh Annual Meeting

Time:              Saturday, March 3, 2001, 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Place:              Lecture Room, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University

                        120 High Street (entrance on Wall Street), New Haven, CT

Organizer:       Bruno H. Repp, Haskins Laboratories

                        E-mail: repp@haskins.yale.edu

Assistant:         Yoko Hoshi, Haskins Laboratories

PROGRAM

8:30 - 9:00       Welcome (coffee, tea, Danish, muffins)

9:00 - 9:30

A REVIEW OF JOHN GIBBON'S HUMAN TIMING RESEARCH, AND ITS CONNECTION TO RESEARCH ON ANIMAL TIMING

Russell M. Church (Department of Psychology, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912)

E-mail: Russell_Church@brown.edu

Although John Gibbon is best known for his important research on animal timing, beginning in 1969 he published research with human participants on temporal order judgment, and later on temporal discrimination and the peak interval procedure, among others. His recent research has focused on the neurobiology of timing in Parkinson's patients, and articles based on this research are currently in press. I will review this research, both for its content and style. It is closely connected to his research on animal timing because both were guided by his development of Scalar Timing Theory.

9:30 - 10:00

AGE-RELATED CHANGES IN THE TIMING BEHAVIOR OF THE SENESCENCE-ACCELERATED MOUSE (SAMP8)

J. Devin McAuley, Eric Beck, J.P. Miller, Michael Nagy, and Kevin C.H. Pang

(Center for Neuroscience, Mind, and Behavior, Department of Psychology,

Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 43403)

E-mail: mcauley@bgnet.bgsu.edu

In the elderly population, particularly in those individuals suffering from senile dementia such as Alzheimer’s disease, behavioral disturbances related to disruption of circadian rhythm are common. These include fragmented sleep-wake patterns, weak coupling with environmental rhythms, high levels of nighttime activity, and deterioration of daytime cognitive performance (Eus et al., 1996; Van Someren et al., 1993; Witte et al., 1996). The P8 strain of the senescence-accelerated mouse (SAMP8) has been used as an animal model of senile dementia.  This strain demonstrates accelerated aging of learning and memory-related cognitive abilities (Miyamoto et al., 1986).  The present study is an investigation of age-related changes in the timing behavior of the SAMP8 on two different time scales: the circadian scale, which includes the various behavioral rhythms typically disrupted with aging, and in the seconds to minute range, which defines many motor behaviors. Previous studies of circadian timing in the SAMP8 have shown various age-related changes in the near 24-hour circadian rhythm, including a decrease in the amplitude of the rhythm and a slower free-running period t (Asai et al., 2000).  In the present study, we replicated and extended these earlier results.  Consistent with Asai et al., we observed an overall age-related slowing of approximately 0.25 hours in the free-running circadian period (t), p < 0.05, a decrease in the amplitude of the rhythm, and higher levels of activity during the subjective night. In addition, we observed the appearance of a strong secondary peak in the periodograms of the aged SAMP8 at approximately half the value of t. This age-related double peak or “splitting” was confirmed by visual inspection of the actograms. Finer analyses of individual wheel revolutions (on the second scale) were performed in order to assess possible age-related differences in motor performance of the SAMP8. These analyses revealed a corresponding slowing of movement rate with age and an increase in movement variability.  

10:00 - 10:30

IS THE MOTOR PROGRAM A BIOLOGICALLY VIABLE CONCEPT?

Jeffrey B. Wagman (Center for the Ecological Study of Perception and Action, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269)

E-mail: Jeffrey.B.Wagman@uconn.edu

Motor programs are potentially powerful concepts in the study of motor control because they are often purported to regulate the sequencing and timing of emerging movement patterns.  Emerging patterns such as these are pervasive in nature, yet the physical sciences do not seem to require programmatic explanations.  In these disciplines, order and pattern are seen as a natural consequence of the juxtaposition of generic principles (e.g., laws) and local constraints. To the extent that programs are independent of this juxtaposition, their biological viability in any process, including motor control, is questionable. Furthermore, in developing a theory of the sequencing and timing of motor control, it is desirable that the principles underlying this process be commensurate with those underlying the sequencing and timing of all such processes in both living and non-living systems. To the extent that these principles are incommensurate, a general theory of sequencing and timing is forfeited.  To investigate the possibility of such commensurability, we explore the emergence of pattern in other biological processes including (1) morphogenesis and embryogenesis, (2) neural growth and development, (3) the phylogenetic development of form, and (4) the ontogenetic development of behavior. 

We find that programs are not required to explain these processes. Instead of being viewed as a process outside of natural law in which upcoming states of the system depend on prior (i.e., programmed) states, sequencing and timing in motor control should be viewed as a process entirely within natural law in which patterns emerge as the dynamic unfolding of events in which upcoming states of the system lawfully depend on the current states of the system.

10:30 - 11:00  

Coffee break

11:00 - 11:30

THE ASYMMETRICAL INTERFERENCE EFFECT IN DURATION JUDGMENTS:

WHY TIMING TASKS ARE NATURALLY TREATED AS SECONDARY TASKS

Dan Zakay (Department of Psychology, Tel-Aviv University, Israel)

E-mail: dzakay@post.tau.ac.il

When a timing task is performed in a dual-task condition simultaneously with a non-temporal task, in most cases only the timing task is harmed (as compared with performance in a single-task condition.) This asymmetric interference effect is obtained even when participants are instructed to treat the timing and non-temporal tasks as equal in resource allocation priority. However, if participants are instructed to regard the timing task as primary and the non-temporal task as secondary, then performance on both tasks is harmed to the same extent, compared with respective single-task performance. Furthermore, performance on non-temporal tasks which include some timing component (e.g., reaction time tasks) is harmed under dual-task conditions to the same extent as performance on timing tasks, even if the latter are defined as secondary tasks. It is argued that these findings indicate that (1) timing tasks consume general resources (e.g., working  memory) as well as unique resources, and (2) timing tasks are naturally treated as secondary tasks by the executive program responsible for resource allocation policy. These arguments are partially supported by neuropsychological data. Their implications for understanding timing processes are discussed.

11:30 - 12:00

TEMPORAL INFORMATION PROCESSING: EFFECTS OF ATTENTIONAL  DEPLOYMENT ON DURATION JUDGMENT AND TEMPORAL ORDER MEMORY

Scott W. Brown and G. Andrew Smith-Petersen (Department of Psychology, University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME  04104)

E-mail: swbrown@usm.maine.edu

This research concerns the nature of temporal information and its relation to the subjective experience of time.  Theorists have argued that temporal information is derived from various temporal attributes such as duration and order.  The present study was designed to investigate the connection between judgments of these two attributes.  Subjects were presented with a series of 20 words displayed on a screen for 1.4 sec each, producing a total duration of 28 sec.  Instructions directed subjects' attention to different temporal attributes.  Half the subjects were instructed to attend to the duration of the interval for an upcoming duration judgment (prospective paradigm) and half were not informed about the duration judgment (retrospective paradigm).  Half the subjects in each group were told to attend to the sequencing of the words for a later temporal order memory test (intentional memory), while half were not given this instruction (incidental memory).  At the completion of the word list, subjects (a) judged the duration of the interval via the methods of verbal estimation and reproduction, and (b) judged the temporal ordering of the words.  The results provided evidence of both enhancement and interference.  Attention to time improved performance on both the duration judgment and temporal order judgment tasks.  However, attention to order improved temporal order judgments only; attention to order interfered with duration judgments.  These findings indicate that order and duration are related, but not equivalent, temporal attributes.  The data also showed that the retrospective paradigm and the incidental memory condition each produced an "uncoupling effect" with respect to time judgment method, in which the verbal estimations and reproductions yielded significantly different values.  The results highlight the importance of attention in temporal information processing.

12:00 - 12:30

AUDITORY FEEDBACK AND PLANNING IN MUSIC PERFORMANCE

Peter Q. Pfordresher  (Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210)

E-mail: pqp@joplin.psy.ohio-state.edu

Past studies have demonstrated the disruptive effects of delaying auditory feedback from a produced sequence by a constant time lag. These effects include increased errors, slowing of production rate, and increased timing variability.  However, altering the contents of auditory feedback (as opposed to its timing) has yielded little, if any, disruption. Piano performance is not significantly disrupted when feedback pitch is randomly altered, and the combination of pitch randomization with time delays actually reduces disruption relative to conditions featuring only time delays (Finney, 1997). Moreover, some previous researchers have claimed that only the displaced feedback rhythm disrupts performance, irrespective of feedback contents (Howell, Powell & Khan, 1983).  None of these studies altered the contents of feedback in a way that maintains a meaningful relationship with the past actions of the performer.  The present study incorporates such delays by introducing a constant pitch lag in auditory feedback relative to produced onsets in piano performance.  The serial order of auditory feedback is thereby phase shifted relative to the serial order of produced events, with performers hearing a note played earlier in synchrony with the current key depression.  This manipulation resulted in increased errors for the majority of performers tested.  In addition, the pattern of disruption across different pitch lags was related to the notated meter of the sequence for most performers.  This second result suggests that the observed disruption might result from conflicts between the perceived and intended patterns of metrical accents. 

12:30 - 1:30

Lunch (sandwiches, fruits, sodas, coffee, tea)

1:30 - 2:00

INFLUENCE OF COGNITIVE ACTIVITY ON DYNAMICS OF BIMANUAL RHYTHMIC COORDINATION

Geraldine L. Pellecchia (Department of Physical Therapy, University of Hartford, West Hartford, CT)

E-mail: pellecchi@mail.hartford.edu

Often in daily living one engages in concurrent cognitive and interlimb coordination activities such as talking while walking. Rhythmic coordination can be expressed as a motion equation in relative phase whose solutions identify the attractors of the movement. Symmetry breaking can be introduced to interlimb coordination by manipulating the difference in the eigenfrequencies (Dw) of the right and left rhythmic components. Previous research has shown that cognitive activity shifts the attractors of bimanual rhythmic coordination. In the present research, we examined the influence of cognitive activity on attractor position under co-manipulations of Dw and movement frequency. Participants oscillated hand-held pendulums at frequencies of 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 Hz paced by a metronome. We varied the lengths of the pendulums to provide three levels of Dw, 0 rad/s and ± 2.93 rad/s. Participants performed all combinations of movement frequency and Dw with a cognitive task (counting backward by 3s) and without the cognitive task. In the absence of the cognitive task, attractors followed the pattern predicted by the motion equation for increasing movement frequency when Dw= 0 and when Dw ¹ 0. With the cognitive task, attractors were shifted when Dw ¹ 0 and increasingly so as the coordination became more destabilized with higher movement frequency. Relatedly, when coordinations were less stable, cognitive performance was impaired. Results suggest that (a) cognitive activity's influence on rhythmic coordination is amplified when attractors are weakened by intrinsic asymmetries, and (b) attentional demands are greater for less stable coordinations.

2:00 - 2:30

SYNCHRONIZING THE HAND AND THE MIND

David A. Rosenbaum¹ and Jacqueline C. Shin² (¹Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, and ²Department of Psychology, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720)

E-mail: ¹dar12@psu.edu, ²jcshin@socrates.berkeley.edu

To address the neglected question of how cognitive and perceptual-motor processes are coordinated, we asked participants to move a cursor from one target to another to reveal operators and operands for a running arithmetic task. In Experiment 1 performance on this task was compared with performance on tasks requiring only aiming or only arithmetic. Aiming was faster in the aiming-only task than in the combined task, and times for steps requiring calculation were equivalent in the aiming-and-arithmetic and arithmetic-only tasks. The results from this and a second experiment suggest that participants slowed their aiming to allow calculations to be completed before subsequent targets were entered. Collectively, the results suggest that cognitive and perceptual-motor processes are coordinated through mutual scheduling.

AUDITORY DOMINANCE IN SYNCHRONIZATION WITH SIMULTANEOUS VISUAL AND AUDITORY SEQUENCES

Bruno H. Repp and Amandine Penel  (Haskins Laboratories, 270 Crown Street, New Haven, CT 06511)

E-mail: repp@haskins.yale.edu

It has been argued that vision and audition are relatively specialized for spatial and temporal processing, respectively. However, whereas visual dominance in spatial localization tasks has been thoroughly investigated (the “ventriloquism effect”), fewer studies have demonstrated auditory dominance in temporal tasks. We examined sensorimotor synchronization with visual and auditory sequences containing a single event onset shift (EOS). Repp (submitted) has shown that an auditory EOS elicits an unintentional phase correction response (PCR) in the timing of the finger taps, regardless of the perceptual detectability of the EOS. We first compared detection and synchronization performance for auditory and visual sequences presented separately. Even though the detection threshold was much higher for visual EOSs than for auditory ones, participants exhibited PCRs that increased linearly with the size of the EOS in both modalities. The visual PCRs were slightly smaller than the auditory ones. Next, we presented auditory and visual sequences simultaneously in two conditions: In the non-conflicting condition, an EOS occurred in either one or the other modality, whereas in the conflicting condition, EOSs of opposite direction occurred simultaneously.  Participants were instructed to synchronize with the visual sequences and try to detect the EOSs there. Both detection responses and PCRs showed an influence of auditory information, and the auditory influence on PCRs was stronger than predicted from the relative sizes of the PCRs to each modality separately. We conclude that auditory dominance occurred in these temporal processing tasks.

3:30 - 4:00

THE SYMMETRY OF SYNCHRONIZED LIMB MOVEMENTS

Michael T. Turvey (Center for the Ecological Study of Perception and Action, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269)

E-mail: turvey@uconnvm.uconn.edu

(Abstract not available)

4:00 - 4:30

APPROACHES TO MODELING DRIFT IN TAPPING SEQUENCES

R. Todd Ogden¹ and Geoffrey L. Collier² (¹Department. of Statistics, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, and ²Department of Psychology, South Carolina State U., Orangeburg, SC 29117)

E-mail: ¹ogden@math.sc.edu, ²Rhythmpsyc@aol.com

The Wing-Kristofferson model for decomposing isochronous tapping into motor and clock variances has been widely applied since its introduction in 1973.  However, it is widely recognized that it does not adequately model performance when tempo drifts, as is frequently the case in real performances.  Stopgap approaches to this problem include experimentally minimizing the opportunity for drift in performances and linear detrending of the data.  A superior approach is to incorporate drift as part of the model.  This talk will discuss several approaches to accounting for drift, including ignoring it, estimation based on residuals from a linear fit, along with some new approaches based on local smoothing. In addition, some methods for estimating the extent of the drift process and the drift function itself will be presented.  Time permitting, a brief demonstration of Java software for these analyses (capable of running over the WWW) will be given.

5:00 - 6:30

Drinks in a bar or walk on Yale campus

6:30 - 8:30

Dinner at Bentara restaurant (76 Orange Street)

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