Reading from a Head-Fixed Display during Walking: Adverse Effects of Gaze Stabilization Mechanisms

International audienceReading performance during standing and walking was assessed for information presented on earth-fixed and head-fixed displays by determining the minimal duration during which a numerical time stimulus needed to be presented for 50% correct naming answers. Reading from the earth-fixed display was comparable during standing and walking, with optimal performance being attained for visual character sizes in the range of 0.2 degrees to 1 degrees. Reading from the head-fixed display was impaired for small (0.2-0.3 degrees) and large (5 degrees) visual character sizes, especially during walking. Analysis of head and eye movements demonstrated that retinal slip was larger during walking than during standing, but remained within the functional acuity range when reading from the earth-fixed display. The detrimental effects on performance of reading from the head-fixed display during walking could be attributed to loss of acuity resulting from large retinal slip. Because walking activated the angular vestibulo-ocular reflex, the resulting compensatory eye movements acted to stabilize gaze on the information presented on the earth-fixed display but destabilized gaze from the information presented on the head-fixed display. We conclude that the gaze stabilization mechanisms that normally allow visual performance to be maintained during physical activity adversely affect reading performance when the information is presented on a display attached to the head

Stratégies d'évitement de collision en intersection

ACAPS 2015 - 16ème Congrès de l'Association des Chercheurs en Activités Physiques et Sportives, Nantes, FRANCE, 26-/10/2015 - 28/10/2015Dans la littérature, certaines études révèlent un effet de la taille des véhicules croisés sur des tâches de jugement et de comportement de conduite des automobilistes à une intersection. Néanmoins, dans ces études, la taille et le type de véhicules croisés (e.g., voiture vs motocyclette) covariaient systématiquement. Cette étude examine séparément l'incidence de la taille et du type de véhicules croisés sur une tâche de jugement et une tâche de franchissement réel d'intersection. Pour cela les voitures et les motocyclettes observées avaient les mêmes dimensions. 14 participants ont réalisé deux expériences dans un simulateur de conduite en réalité virtuelle. Les résultats montrent que les automobilistes utilisaient la taille et type de véhicules croisés pour réaliser les deux tâches

How can ten fingers shape a pot? Evidence for equivalent function in culturally distinct motor skills

Behavioural variability is likely to emerge when a particular task is performed in different cultural settings, assuming that part of human motor behaviour is influenced by culture. In analysing motor behaviour it is useful to distinguish how the action is performed from the result achieved. Does cultural environment lead to specific cultural motor skills? Are there differences between cultures both in the skills themselves and in the corresponding outcomes? Here we analyse the skill of pottery wheel-throwing in French and Indian cultural environments. Our specific goal was to examine the ability of expert potters from distinct cultural settings to reproduce a common model shape (a sphere). The operational aspects of motor performance were captured through the analysis of the hand positions used by the potters during the fashioning process. In parallel, the outcomes were captured by the geometrical characteristics of the vessels produced. As expected, results revealed a cultural influence on the operational aspects of the potters' motor skill. Yet, the marked cultural differences in hand positions used did not give rise to noticeable differences in the shapes of the vessels produced. Hence, for the simple model form studied, the culturally-specific motor traditions of the French and Indian potters gave rise to an equivalent outcome, that is shape uniformity. Further work is needed to test whether such equivalence is also observed in more complex ceramic shapes

Freezing and freeing of degrees of freedom in joint action learning

In daily life, we often encounter situations in which we have to coordinate our actions with others to achieve a common goal. These actions are also defined as joint actions. In this study we investigated how a multi-agent system learns to acquire control in a novel joint action task. To this end, we designed a task in which agents had to coordinate their actions so as to control a ball rolling on a long, hand-held beam. Participants' task was to roll the ball as fast and accurately as possible back-and-forth between two indicated targets on the beam, by manually adjusting the inclination angle of the beam. In the joint action version of this task, two participants each hold a different beam extremity. In a solo action version, the participant holds one extremity while the other is attached to a static support. The experiment consisted of two practice sessions that each comprised 15 two-min trials. One group of 12 participants first performed a solo action session of the task and then a joint action session (Group S/J), while another group of 12 participants started with a joint action session, followed by a solo action session (Group J/S). While performance increased over practice in all sessions, we found that in the joint action task dyads without prior solo task experience (Group J/S) adopted a sequential pattern of interpersonal coordination by freezing their motion whenever the other agent moved. In contrast, dyads that had received prior practice in the solo task setting (Group S/J) demonstrated less freezing and more complementary motion during the joint action performance. Lastly, we found that initial practice as a dyad in the joint action task did not result in a significant improvement of a subsequent solo action performance. We concluded that multi-agent motor learning in a novel joint action task is characterized by the initial freezing of task-relevant degrees of freedom, while individual training in a constrained setting can stimulate the freeing of these DFs during subsequent joint action performance

Information-based social coordination between players of different skill in doubles pong

International audienceWe studied how teams of two players of different skill level intercepted approaching balls in the doubles-pong task. In this task, the two players moved their on-screen paddles along a shared interception axis, so that the approaching ball was intercepted by one of the paddles and that the paddles did not collide. Earlier work revealed the presence of a fuzzy division of interception space, with a boundary between interception domains located in the space between the two initial paddle positions. In the present study, using the performance of the players in their individual training sessions, we formed teams of players of varying skill level. We considered two accounts of how this boundary should be understood. In a first account, the players have shared knowledge of this boundary. Based on the side of the boundary at which the approaching ball will cross the interception axis, the players would decide whose paddle is to make the interception. Under this account, we expected that a better-skilled player would take responsibility for a larger interception domain, leading to a boundary closer to the lesser-skilled player. However, our analyses did not reveal any systematic effect of skill difference on the location (or degree of fuzziness) of the boundary: location of boundaries and overlap of interception domains varied over teams but were not systematically related to skill differences between team members. We did find effects of ball speed and approach angle. In a second account, the boundary emerges from (information-driven) player-player-ball interactions. An action-based model consistent with this account was able to capture all the patterns in boundary positions and overlaps that we observed. We conclude that the interception patterns that players demonstrate in the doubles-pong task are best understood as emerging from the unfolding of the dynamics of the system of the two players and the ball, coupled through information

Perception of spin and the interception of curved football trajectories

International audienceUsing plain white and chequered footballs, we evaluated observers' sensitivity to rotation direction and the effects of ball texture on interceptive behaviour. Experiment 1 demonstrated that the maximal distance at which observers (n=8) could perceive the direction of ball rotation decreased when rotation frequency increased from 5 to 11Hz. Detection threshold distances were nevertheless always larger for the chequered (decreasing from 47 to 28m) than for the white (decreasing from 15 to 11m) ball. In Experiment 2, participants (n=7) moved laterally along a goal line to intercept the two balls launched with or without +/- 4.3Hz sidespin from a 30-m distance. The chequered ball gave rise to shorter movement initiation times when trajectories curved outward (+/- 6m arrival positions) or did not curve (+/- 2m arrival positions). Inward curving trajectories, arriving at the same +/- 2m distances from the participants as the non-curving trajectories, evoked initial movements in the wrong direction for both ball types, but the amplitude and duration of these reversal movements were attenuated for the chequered ball. We conclude that the early detection of rotation permitted by the chequered ball allowed modulation of interception behaviour without changing its qualitative characteristics