TIMING OF DISCRETE ACTIONS: EVIDENCE FOR PERCEPTUAL DOMINANCE IN HUMAN PERFORMANCE

摘要

An experiment involving a street-crossing task is described. Thesubject were required to release a pedestrian within a narrow of opportnuity to cross the road without being run over by vehicles. Totest a number of hypotheses on whether timing of actions is driven by peicepyual cues or some internal clocking mechanistns,the experment involved condilions where the street-ciossing task was either visblc throughout trials or where the vchicles were removed,and coupled with a concurient mental arithmetic loading task with either visually or audiorly presented stimuli The data support the hypothcsis that when the stimuli remarn visble, people predominantly rely on perceptual cuse for trnining disciele actions Significant performance decremcnts were obsorved in the removal conditions Importance of the visual component in the task performance was supported by the larger performance decrement in the unmasked condition when the subject attention had to be divided between two scts of visual stimuli. When the primary task stimuli were removed,the clock countion sccms to be the prclcrred stralegy for the task under study.