Steenhuis R E, Goodale M A
Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.
J Mot Behav. 1988 Dec;20(4):399-415. doi: 10.1080/00222895.1988.10735454.
The present study was an attempt to replicate the findings of an influential set of experiments by Thomson (1980, 1983) in which he demonstrated a highly accurate but transitory short-term memory for target location during locomotion. No evidence of Thomson's rapidly decaying 8 s short-term memory was found in either of the two experiments presented here. The distance to the target, not the elapsed time, was found to be the major variable affecting the accuracy of walks made without the benefit of visual feedback; as target distance increased so did locomotor error. Increasing the elapsed time to more than 8 s between viewing the target and reaching the vicinity of the target had no effect on the accuracy of walks made with eyes closed. When the elapsed time was greater than 30 s, however, performance began to deteriorate. These results suggest, in sharp contrast to Thomson's experiments, that short-term memory for target location decays rather slowly during locomotion. In this regard, short-term memory in locomotor tasks appears to be little different from the kinds of short-term memory associated with other motor acts.
本研究旨在重复汤姆森（1980年、1983年）所做的一系列具有影响力的实验结果，在这些实验中，他证明了在运动过程中对目标位置具有高度准确但短暂的短期记忆。在本文呈现的两个实验中，均未发现汤姆森所提出的迅速衰退的8秒短期记忆的证据。研究发现，影响无视觉反馈行走准确性的主要变量是与目标的距离，而非经过的时间；随着目标距离增加，运动误差也随之增加。在查看目标与到达目标附近之间，将经过的时间增加到超过8秒，对闭眼行走的准确性没有影响。然而，当经过的时间大于30秒时，表现开始变差。这些结果表明，与汤姆森的实验形成鲜明对比的是，在运动过程中，对目标位置的短期记忆衰退相当缓慢。在这方面，运动任务中的短期记忆似乎与其他运动行为相关的短期记忆没有太大区别。
