How much cognition is in action? Using dual-tasks to explore the involvement of cognitive processes in action planning, programming and motor learning.

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Are visuomotor acts immune to interference from a secondary task? We asked this question in our first funding period and concluded that there is no such immunity. Instead we and others found that action and cognition interact in sometimes surprising ways. While a concurrent, cognitive task will typically render the visuomotor behavior less efficient, not all visuomotor behaviors are affected by this curse, instead there seems to be a continuum of vulnerability to dual-task costs and cognitive penetrability. We are planning a series of experiments to explore this continuum. Some visuomotor tasks can be complex, demanding that the movement is adjusted to a distal goal, that its environmental consequences are anticipated or that the proper balance between task complexity and physical effort is found. For such tasks we expect high mental load and concomitantly high vulnerability to resource limitations due to secondary task demands. On the other hand we have acts which appear to be so engrained that the actor will perform them without even becoming aware of the stimulus that triggered the act. To introduce such situations and provide the opportunity to study the dual-task costs in this type of behavior we will exploit the phenomenon of saccadic suppression using gaze-contingent displays. The same continuum that is found in motor control is also at work in motor learning. The role of cognition in different aspects of motor learning will be examined in a sample of patients with cerebellar lesions. Finally, concurrent cognitive activity leads not in all instances to a general decrement of motor performance. Sometimes the effects can be more specific, causing a processing bias, or can be even helpful. Our last aim in this proposal is to understand when this biasing effect occurs and to test whether in some conditions mental load can facilitate motor learning.