Dear Herbert,
There is quite some research on coordination tendencies of the kind you
describe. I've devoted part of my scientific life to these phenomena as
they seem to provide fundamental insights into the principles of human
movement in general. My own guiding hypothesis is that the relevant
principles for coordination are to be found mostly on a psychological
rather than on a physiological level (as you seem to suggest). In
short: Movement is about forming perceptual-conceptual meaningful
structures ("Gestalten") that include body and environment. This is
true even in the case of seemingly simple movement coordination
tendencies. In your case: "similarity" is a principle, that may well
guide the described tendency to repeat a movement pattern of the same
finger combination. However, in more complex situations, that
coordinative principle may well be silent, while other principles are
governing. E.g., imagine you are playing a piece on the lute. This
time, there is a tendency to move, say, the left-hand fingers according
to the music at hand, but NO tendency to repeat simple patterns. In
short: Movement is always part of a perceptual-conceptual "Gestalt" and
is best understood as such. So much for my humble guiding idea, while I
have to add that there are people who disagree and insist on the
guiding role of "physiological" principals. There is one piece of my
work on the issue that can be retrieved free from the net:
http://wexler.free.fr/library/files/mechsner%20%282001%29%20perceptual%
20basis%20of%20bimanual%20coordination.pdf
That article is, as it seems to me, rather readable for the general
public, if you skip the too scientific details. Herbert, Experiment 2
is about coordination tendendies in tapping movements, which comes
close to the example you describe. The article is mostly about the
perceptual principle of symmetry, but the general idea is, as said,
that movement is generally about perceptual-conceptual principles. The
question is always, then: Which is the perceptual-conceptual structure
here in which the movement is embedded?
If you are really interested I can send you more.
Best regards
Franz
-----------------------
Dr. Franz Mechsner
Zum Kirschberg 40
D-14806 Belzig OT Borne
[email protected]
+49(0)33841-441362
Gesendet: Montag, 06. Oktober 2014 um 07:06 Uhr
Von: "Herbert Ward" <[email protected]>
An: [email protected]
Betreff: [LUTE] Initiating finger movement.
One of my exercises is this: place all
four fingers of the LH on the 2nd course.
Then, select one pair of fingers at a time,
and move them in a pattern while keeping
the other pair of fingers fixed.*
In doing this exercise, I find that after
movement is initiated, I seldom get con-
fused about which fingers should be moving
and which should be stationary.
It is only during initiation of movement
that I accidentally move a wrong finger.
I also find that having recently moved
a pair of fingers is quite conducive to
initiating them again.
I wonder whether anyone can describe a
physiological basis for these two phenomena.
* There are six possible pairs, 12, 23, 34,
13, 24, and 14.
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References
1. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
