Lehrstuhl für Klinische Neuropsychologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Leopoldstr. 13, 80802 München, Germany.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2022 Aug;228:103637. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103637. Epub 2022 Jun 8.
In the present study, we examined the extent of interference between a cognitive task (auditory n-back task) and different aspects of motor performance. Specifically, we wanted to find out whether such interference is more pronounced for aspects of planning as compared to programming. Here, motor planning is represented by a phenomenon called the "end-state comfort effect", the fact that we tolerate uncomfortable initial postures in favour of a more comfortable final posture. We asked participants to grasp differently sized cylindrical objects and to place them on target platforms of varying height (grasp-and-place task), So, participants were required to (1) adjust their hand opening to the object width (action programming) and (2) to plan whether to grasp the object higher or lower in order to be able to place it comfortably onto the low or high target platform. We found that participants demonstrated the end-state comfort effect by anticipating the final posture und planning the movement accordingly with a higher object-grasp for low end-target position and lower object-grasp height for high end-target position, respectively. The auditory task was negatively affected by having to perform a visuomotor task in parallel, suggesting that the two tasks share cognitive and attentional resources. No significant impact from the auditory task on the motor tasks was found. Accordingly, it was not possible to determine which of the two motor aspects (programming or planning) contributed more towards the interference observed in the auditory task. To address this question, we carried out a second experiment. For this second experiment we focussed on the interference effects found in the auditory task and contrasted two versions of the grasp-and-place task. In the first version of the task, the height of the target-shelf varied from trial-to-trial but the width of the target object remained the same. We assumed that this version had high planning demands and low programming demands. In the second version the width of the target object varied and the target-shelf height remained constant. Presumably this increased programming demands but reduced planning demands. Significant interference with the auditory task was only found for the first version, supporting the hypothesis that motor planning requires more cognitive resources and thus creates higher multitasking costs.
在本研究中，我们考察了认知任务（听觉 n-回任务）与不同运动表现方面之间的干扰程度。具体而言，我们想了解这种干扰在计划方面是否比在编程方面更为明显。在这里，运动计划由一种称为“终点舒适效应”的现象来代表，即我们宁愿忍受不舒服的初始姿势，也要选择更舒适的最终姿势。我们要求参与者抓取不同大小的圆柱形物体，并将它们放置在不同高度的目标平台上（抓取放置任务）。因此，参与者需要（1）调整手的开口以适应物体的宽度（动作编程），（2）计划是要高抓还是低抓物体，以便能够将其舒适地放置在低或高目标平台上。我们发现，参与者通过预期最终姿势并相应地计划运动来表现出终点舒适效应，对于低目标位置，他们会高抓物体，对于高目标位置，他们会低抓物体。听觉任务会受到同时执行视觉运动任务的负面影响，这表明这两个任务共享认知和注意力资源。听觉任务对运动任务没有明显影响。因此，无法确定两个运动方面（编程或计划）中的哪一个对听觉任务中观察到的干扰贡献更大。为了解决这个问题，我们进行了第二个实验。在第二个实验中，我们关注听觉任务中发现的干扰效应，并对比了抓取放置任务的两个版本。在任务的第一个版本中，目标架子的高度在每次试验中都有所变化，但目标物体的宽度保持不变。我们假设这个版本具有较高的计划需求和较低的编程需求。在第二个版本中，目标物体的宽度变化，而目标架子的高度保持不变。这可能增加了编程需求，但减少了计划需求。只有在第一个版本中才发现与听觉任务的显著干扰，这支持了运动计划需要更多认知资源的假设，从而导致更高的多重任务成本。
