Jagadeesan Ramkumar, Grahn Jessica A
Department of Psychology, Western University, London, ON, Canada.
Western Centre for Brain and Mind, Western University, London, ON, Canada.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2025 Mar 24;19:1457007. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2025.1457007. eCollection 2025.
Spontaneous intrapersonal coordination is the unintentional coordination of periodic behaviors within an individual. Spontaneous interlimb coordination involving finger-, arm-, foot-, leg- and orofacial muscle movements may be weaker between finger-tapping and walking than between finger-tapping and vocalizing. This could be due to the additional attentional cost of walking, which may be more complex than other periodic movements. Here we compared the coordination stability of simultaneous finger-tapping and walking against simultaneous finger-tapping and repetitive vocalization. We also tested the coordination stability of tapping-walking and tapping-vocalizing under additional cognitive load imposed through concurrent cognitive tasks. Two experiments conceptually replicated spontaneous intrapersonal coordination between the pairs of periodic tasks as well as the effect of concurrent cognitive tasks on coordination stability. To assess coordination, we compared the phase coherence of two periodic tasks, tapping with walking (Experiment 1) or tapping with vocalization (Experiment 2), when produced separately (single task) versus simultaneously (dual task). In the first experiment, participants regularly tapped a microphone while walking, either with no concurrent cognitive task or with concurrent backward counting. In the second experiment, participants tapped while repeating the word "tick," again either with no concurrent cognitive task, or with concurrent visual pattern-matching. Higher spontaneous intrapersonal coordination was evident between periodic tasks when performed simultaneously compared to separately, and lower task coordination stability was evident with a concurrent cognitive task compared to without. These results were in line with past findings. Coordination stability between tapping and walking was lower than that between tapping and ticking overall. This finding supports the categorization of walking as a more complex cognitive task compared to other periodic tasks, as the additional attentional load involved in walking could have resulted in lower coordination stability between tapping and walking. Spontaneous intrapersonal coordination appears sensitive to the attentional costs of performing periodic activities and achieving / maintaining coordination between them.
自发的个体内协调是个体内部周期性行为的无意协调。涉及手指、手臂、脚部、腿部和口面部肌肉运动的自发肢体间协调，在手指敲击与行走之间可能比在手指敲击与发声之间更弱。这可能是由于行走额外的注意力成本，行走可能比其他周期性运动更复杂。在这里，我们比较了同时进行手指敲击和行走与同时进行手指敲击和重复性发声的协调稳定性。我们还测试了在通过并发认知任务施加额外认知负荷的情况下，敲击 - 行走和敲击 - 发声的协调稳定性。两个实验从概念上复制了成对周期性任务之间的自发个体内协调以及并发认知任务对协调稳定性的影响。为了评估协调性，我们比较了两个周期性任务的相位相干性，即分别进行（单任务）与同时进行（双任务）时，敲击与行走（实验1）或敲击与发声（实验2）的情况。在第一个实验中，参与者在行走时定期敲击麦克风，要么没有并发认知任务，要么有并发倒数任务。在第二个实验中，参与者在重复单词“滴答”时进行敲击，同样要么没有并发认知任务，要么有并发视觉模式匹配任务。与分别进行相比，同时进行周期性任务时，更高的自发个体内协调明显可见；与没有并发认知任务相比，有并发认知任务时，任务协调稳定性明显更低。这些结果与过去的研究结果一致。总体而言，敲击与行走之间的协调稳定性低于敲击与滴答声之间的协调稳定性。这一发现支持了将行走归类为比其他周期性任务更复杂的认知任务，因为行走所涉及的额外注意力负荷可能导致敲击与行走之间的协调稳定性较低。自发的个体内协调似乎对执行周期性活动的注意力成本以及在它们之间实现/维持协调很敏感。
