KINE 3650 Ch. 8 and 10

Action preparation

The activity that occurs between the intention to perform an action and the initiation of that action. Sometimes, the term motor programming is used to refer to this preparation activity.

Hick's Law 

A law of human performance stating that RT will increase logarithmically as the number of stimulus-response choices increases.

Cost-benefit trade-off

The cost (in terms of slower RT) and benefit (in terms of faster RT) that occur as a result of biasing the preparation of an action in favor of one of several possible actions (as opposed to preparing as if each possible action were equally probable).

Stimulus-response compatibility 

A characteristic of the spatial arrangement relationship between a stimulus and a response. This relationship includes the spatial arrangement of stimuli and the limb movements required to respond to them, and the physical characteristics or meaning of a stimulus and the type of response required. The degree of compatibility influences the amount of preparation time in a reaction time task involving stimulus and response choices.

Stroop effect

A type of stimulus-response compatibility situation in which a color’s name and ink are the same or different. RT for saying the word is faster when both are the same color than when the word is a different ink color.

Forperiod

In a reaction time paradigm, the time interval between a warning signal and the go signal, or stimulus.

Psychological refractory period 

A delay period during which a person seems to put planned action “on hold” while executing a previously initiated action.

Working memory

A functional system in the structure of memory that operates to temporarily store and use recently presented information; it also serves as a temporary workspace to integrate recently presented information with information retrieved from long-term memory to carry out problem-solving, decision-making, and action-preparation activities.

Long-term memory 

A component system in the structure of memory that serves as a relatively permanent storage repository for information.

Declarative knowledge 

Knowledge about what to do in a situation; this knowledge typically is verbalizable.

Procedural knowledge 

Knowledge that enables a person to know how to do a skill; this knowledge typically is difficult to verbalize or is not verbalizable.

Encording 

A memory process involving the transformation of information to be remembered into a form that can be stored in memory.

Retrieval

A memory process involving the search through long-term memory for information needed to perform the task at hand.

Recall test

An explicit memory test that requires a person to produce a required response with few, if any, available cues or aids.

Recognition test

An explicit memory test that requires a person to select a correct response from several alternative responses.

Proactive interference

A cause of forgetting because of activity that occurs prior to the presentation of information to be remembered.

Retroactive interference 

A cause of forgetting because of activity occurring during the retention interval.

Encoding specificity principle 

A memory principle that indicates the close relationship between encoding and retrieval memory processes. It states that memory test performance is directly related to the amount of similarity between the practice and the test contexts; that is, the more similarity, the better the test performance will be.