The interplay of attention and bimanual coordination dynamics

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Abstract

Despite their common origin, studies on motor coordination and on attentional load have developed into separate fields of investigation, bringing out findings, methods, and theories which are diverse if not mutually exclusive. Sitting at the intersection of these two fields, this article addresses the issue of behavioral flexibility by investigating how intention modifies the stability of existing patterns of coordination between moving limbs. It addresses the issue, largely ignored until now, of the attentional cost incurred by the central nervous system (CNS) in maintaining a coordination pattern at a given level of stability, in particular under different attentional priority requirements. The experimental paradigm adopted in these studies provides an original mix of a classical measure of attentional load, namely, reaction time, and of a dynamic approach to coordination, most suitable for characterizing the dynamic properties of coordinated behavior and behavioral change. Findings showed that central cost and pattern stability covary, suggesting that bimanual coordination and the attentional activity of the CNS involved in maintaining such a coordination bear on the same underlying dynamics. Such a conclusion provides a strong support to a unified approach to coordination encompassing a conceptualization in terms of information processing and another, more recent framework rooted in self-organization theories and dynamical systems models

Introduction

One of the most amazing capabilities of biological systems is their broad behavioral flexibility, that is, the ability to alter behavior on several time scales––from a swift parametrical modulation of a behavioral pattern (e.g., changing the speed of walking) to a slow acquisition of a new behavior through learning (e.g., mastering a new sports skill)––in response to influences of various origins (environmental, volitional, attentional, etc.). A main challenge for movement scientists is to identify the mechanisms and principles through which behavioral flexibility arises from the interplay between constraints inherent to the behaving system and extraneous influences. Recently, much attention has been drawn on rhythmic interlimb coordination, particularly from a dynamical systems perspective (see Kelso (1995), for a review). This perspective bears on three main tenets, inspired by synergetics (Haken, 1983), a theory a self-organization in complex systems: (a) coordination patterns emerge from the mutual influences among interacting subsystems (e.g., neural, muscular, mechanical, energetic) that compose the system under scrutiny, without requiring any external or internalized prescription; (b) these patterns of coordination can be characterized by a low dimensional collective variable or order parameter; and (c) pattern stability, loss of stability and the transition between existing patterns manifest the existence of underlying coordination dynamics that can be captured formally by an equation of motion of the collective variable. As an outcome, there is a direct mapping between the limited set of stable states, or attractors, that the theoretical coordination dynamics exhibit under various values of a control parameter and the few patterns of coordination, coined as “spontaneous or preferred patterns” (Kelso, 1995; Zanone & Kelso, 1992), that are observed behaviorally in different situations that do not impose any constraints as to which coordination pattern might emerge.

This review paper addresses the issue of behavioral flexibility by investigating how intention and attention modify the stability of spontaneous coordination dynamics between oscillating limbs. Moreover, it tackles the issue, largely ignored until now, of the attentional cost incurred by the central nervous system (CNS) in maintaining a coordination pattern at a given level of stability.

Section snippets

The HKB dynamic model of bimanual coordination

The strongest support for a synergetic approach to coordination comes from a series of studies on bimanual coordination. Bimanual coordination is characterized by two preferred patterns of coordination––in-phase and anti-phase (Kelso, 1984). In the case of motion in the horizontal plane, the in-phase pattern involves symmetric motion of the hands in opposite directions, due to the simultaneous activation of homologous muscles, whereas the anti-phase pattern involves motion in the same

Behavioral information and flexibility of spontaneous coordination dynamics

The constraints imposed by underlying spontaneous coordination dynamics on the actual behavior, however, do not preclude flexibility. Several studies have shown that subjects may intentionally: (a) switch between preferred coordination patterns (Carson, Byblow, Abernethy, & Summers, 1996; Carson, Goodman, Kelso, & Elliott, 1994; Scholz & Kelso, 1990); (b) delay or inhibit the spontaneous transition from one pattern to another (Lee, Blandin, & Proteau, 1996); (c) momentarily stabilize an

Measure of attentional influences on coordination dynamics through central cost

Attention has long been considered a prominent mediator which allocates “energetic resources” (e.g., Navon, 1984; Sanders, 1998; Van der Molen, 1996; Wickens, 1984) or “effort” (Kahneman, 1973) to a given task. Classically, attentional load is considered to be a dedicated measure of such an energy or effort. Operationally, it can be assessed through a dual-task paradigm, in which the attentional priority given to each task is manipulated (see below for details). Attentional load approximately

Stability of preferred patterns and central cost

In a first study (Temprado, Zanone, Monno, & Laurent, 1999), we aimed to check whether maintaining preferred patterns of coordination (i.e., in-phase and anti-phase) occurs at an attentional cost, which may vary as a function of their proper stability. Other goals were (a) to test whether preferred bimanual coordination states might be stabilized intentionally through attentional focus directed to the coordination task and (b) to determine whether intentional stabilization of preferred bimanual

Covariation of pattern stability and attentional cost

In Zanone et al., 2001, Zanone et al., 1999 study, we aimed to obtain a finer description of the (co)variation between the stability of preferred bimanual patterns and central cost. We manipulated the oscillation frequency over a large range about that adopted spontaneously. The lower stability of the anti-phase pattern is not only evident before the transition, but also when the system is forced away from its ”preferred” frequency, that is, when oscillations are performed at frequencies that

Short-term effects of attention focus on behavioral dynamics and central cost

In another study, we (Monno, Chardenon, Temprado, Zanone, & Laurent, 2000) aimed to establish whether the central cost incurred by the CNS, indexed by RT measures, covaries with the stability of the coordination patterns performed in the vicinity of (before and after) the phase transition from anti-phase to in-phase. We investigated the effects of focus of attention on bimanual coordination dynamics, especially on phase transitions between preferred stable coordination patterns induced by

Effects of biomechanically altered dynamics on attentional cost

In our previous studies, we adopted a perspective inspired by synergetics. In this approach, the behavioral picture of the spontaneous dynamics of bimanual coordination was formalized through the dynamics of the relative phase between the components, using non-linear oscillators that are coordinated by a low-energy (non-linear) coupling function (Haken et al., 1985). At a conceptual level, in the HKB model relative phase may be considered an abstract coordination variable rather than an

Evolution of spontaneous coordination dynamics and central cost with learning

In all the experiments reported above, attention has been shown to display the characteristics of behavioral information, influencing temporarily the stability of preferred patterns. Then, the present approach also provides an operational means to study long-term effects (learning) of focusing of attention on spontaneous behavioral coordination dynamics and central cost. In a dynamic pattern framework, learning is considered as the process by which behavioral information (namely, attentional)

Conclusion

This paper presented an overview of the effects of selective attention on the stability of preferred patterns and, hence, on spontaneous coordination dynamics, a topic seldom addressed from a dynamical systems approach (cf. Amazeen et al., 1997; Swinnen et al., 1996; Wuyts et al., 1996, for notable exceptions). An originality of the studies presented in this paper is that they combine a classical dual-task method with a dynamical paradigm in order to investigate the relationships between

Acknowledgments

We sincerely thank A. Chardenon, T. Coyle and M. Lecorre for their contribution to this research program.

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