Action history influences subsequent movement via two distinct processes

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Abstract

The characteristics of goal-directed actions tend to resemble those of previously executed actions, but it is unclear whether such effects depend strictly on action history, or also reflect context-dependent processes related to predictive motor planning. Here we manipulated the time available to initiate movements after a target was specified, and studied the effects of predictable movement sequences, to systematically dissociate effects of the most recently executed movement from the movement required next. We found that directional biases due to recent movement history strongly depend upon movement preparation time, suggesting an important contribution from predictive planning. However predictive biases co-exist with an independent source of bias that depends only on recent movement history. The results indicate that past experience influences movement execution through a combination of temporally-stable processes that are strictly use-dependent, and dynamically-evolving and context-dependent processes that reflect prediction of future actions.

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Welber Marinovic

School of Psychology and Speech Pathology, Curtin University, Perth, Australia

For correspondence
welber.marinovic@curtin.edu.au

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-2472-7955
Eugene Poh

School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1719-000X
Aymar de Rugy

School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Timothy J Carroll

School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

For correspondence
timothy.carroll@uq.edu.au

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Funding

Australian Research Council (DE120100653)

Welber Marinovic

Australian Research Council (FT120100391)

Timothy J Carroll

The authors declare that the Australian Research Council had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: All procedures were approved by the Human Medical Research Ethics Committee of the University of Queensland and written informed consent was obtained from the participants.

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.