Microstructural Analysis of the Execution of Complex Motor Actions: Methods and Results

摘要

The authors present the first full description of their ongoing research on the development of motor skills, research in which they are particularly concerned with the relationships between the motor and cognitive components of these skills. In the series of studies described here, subjects were observed and monitored during an extensive period of training and practice as they learned to move a curser on a video display through a variety of trajectories in a simulated three-dimensional space. The immediate impetus for the research was a series of practical problems and issues in ergonomics. When understood in its proper historical and theoretical context, the research is of interest not only to those concerned with the practical issues of ergonomics and engineering psychology but to a wide range of scholars concerned with the nature and development of cognition. The two most significant influences on the work were the conceptual systems and research strategies developed by the physiologist N.A. Bernshtein and the psychologist A.V. Zaporozhets. One of their goals in the book was to integrate the conceptual schemas developed by these prominent Soviet scholars into a unified framework for research on the development of motor skills.