Abstract
The current study investigated whether the influence of available task constraints on power-law scaling might be moderated by a participant’s task intention. Participants performed a simple rhythmic movement task with the intention of controlling either movement period or amplitude, either with or without an experimental stimulus designed to constrain period. In the absence of the stimulus, differences in intention did not produce any changes in power-law scaling. When the stimulus was present, however, a shift toward more random fluctuations occurred in the corresponding task dimension, regardless of participants’ intentions. More importantly, participants’ intentions interacted with available task constraints to produce an even greater shift toward random variation when the task dimension constrained by the stimulus was also the dimension the participant intended to control. Together, the results suggest that intentions serve to more tightly constrain behavior to existing environmental constraints, evidenced by changes in the fractal scaling of task performance.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health (R01GM105045). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the views of the National Institutes of Health. We would like to thank Guy Van Orden for his invaluable contributions to the field of complexity science.
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This article is part of the Special Issue on ‘Complexity in brain and cognition’ and has been edited by Cees van Leeuwen.
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Washburn, A., Coey, C.A., Romero, V. et al. Interaction between intention and environmental constraints on the fractal dynamics of human performance. Cogn Process 16, 343–350 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-015-0652-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-015-0652-6