THE SEQUENTIAL STRUCTURE OF MOVEMENT OUTCOME IN LEARNING A DISCRETE TIMING TASK

The sequential structure of discrete movement outcomes in an elbow-fle xion movement task was examined with a crossed design of 2 movement-ti me (125 and 500 ms) and 2 range-of-motion (5 degrees and 20 degrees) c onditions over sets of 200 trials of practice. Traditional analyses of error score techniques, time-series analyses of the quantitative raw and differenced data, and a symbolic dynamic analysis of qualitative e vents arising from the data were conducted. The differenced data revea led a consistent order over S-trial strings that was more apparent wit h larger steps in the data scores, but quantitative time-series and sy mbolic dynamic analyses of the raw movement-time data showed weaker re lations. There were a few patterns of structure evident in the raw dat a time-series that were a function of the movement condition and the s kill level of the subject. The analyses of the movement-time scores re vealed that, in learning the discrete timing task, there is more order apparent in the intrinsic frame of reference of the difference scores than in the extrinsic frame of reference.