The generation of movement patterns during the acquisition of a pursuit tracking task

Abstract In these two experiments the organization and generation of a movement sequence was investigated. The subjects learned a pursuit tracking task in which the stimulus was a periodic complex sine wave. An input blanking paradigm was used to enable a quantitative assessment of the waveform being generated by the subjects. The learned response that was produced by subjects from memeory during input blanking appeared to have been organized in terms of the component frequencies of that response. The amplitude and phase relationship of the lower harmonics of the stimulus were of major concern to the subjects early in learning, while the higher harmonics remained relatively unimportant. After an extended number of learning trials the subjects generated a response that was a closer approximation of the stimulus especially with respect to the higher harmonics of the composite waveform. A discussion of how these findings relate to a process oriented description of response organization is undertaken.