AbstractsPsychology

INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM Among the conditions known to influence the acquisition and retention of responses is the amount of muscular effort expended during training. In the literature of psychology there are many empirical studies as well as speculative accounts which support the view that there is an optimal amount of experimentally induced muscular effort which facilitates the learning of verbal and motor tasks. From these demonstrations it seems reasonable to anticipate that this relationship would also obtain for the learning of perceptual skills. Accordingly, the present investigation was directed to an analysis of how experimentally induced muscular activity during the training procedure affects the recognition of visual forms. A. The General Pedagogic Conception of the Role of Muscular Effort on Learning Recognition of the influence of muscular tonus on performance has long been represented in the general pedagogical view that learning can be facilitated by the arousal of a hypothetical condition of "attention" which is produced either by the application of incentives or by requiring the learner to perform certain muscular responses during the acquisition process. B. The Use of Muscular Effort in Formal Perceptual Training When considering specifically the are a of formal perceptual training, educators have enlarged the restricted concept of muscular tonus as a learning facilitator to include the broader notion that patterns of muscular activity may act as facilitators. That the learning of visual form may be dependent on task-related muscular activity, (copying alphabet, etc.), has been explicity hypothesized, especially in relation to the process of learning to read and write (Freeman). SYSTEMATIC ANALYSES OF THE EFFECTS OF INDUCED MUSCULAR EFFORT A. The Experiments A systematic relationship between muscular effort and performance was first incidentally indicated in connection with simple sensory discriminations (Breese, Miller). The first investigations specifically designed to study the influence of experimentally induced effort on performance was that of Bills. He found that performance on several types of tasks was significantly improved if subjects gripped dynamometer handles during training. Following Bills' pioneer experimentation, many investigators using a variety of effort inducing techniques and a variety of tasks have attempted to test and specify Bills' general conclusion that experimentally induced tension facilitates performance. The diversified results of these experiments have served to focus experimental attention towards the determination of the conditions which apparently modify the facilitative influence of muscular effort on performance. Accordingly, the major investigations in this area have concentrated on studying the following variables: (1) The amount of induced muscular activity (Stauffacher, Courts); (2) The locus of induced muscular activity (Davis, Freeman); (3) The nature of the tasks (Freeman); (4) Practice effects (Courts); (5) Volitional and motivational factors…