John F. Catalano

Effect of perceived proximity to end of task upon end-spurt.

2 experiments employing different types of tasks (vigilance and rotary pursuit tracking) were carried out to determine the relationship between S‘s perceived proximity to the end of the task and the occurrence of end-spurt (performance improvement as the end of a task is approached). In both experiments significant end-spurt occurred when Ss were led to believe that the task was 90% completed. This finding was difficult to explain since questionnaire data showed nothing unique about the meaning of “90%.” An arousal interpretation of the end-spurt phenomenon was offered but a distinction was made between end-spurt occurring in laboratory situations and industrial settings.

AROUSAL AS A FACTOR IN REMINISCENCE

Explanations of performance changes such as decrement and reminiscence are usually attributed to the development and dissipation of inhibition. It was suggested here that changes of activation level may also account for these performance phenomena. An experiment was designed to determine the effects of an interpolated activating stimulus (induced muscular tension) upon reminiscence in rotary pursuit tracking. A significant enhancement of reminiscence beyond that resulting from rest alone was found to occur following stimulation. Magnitude of enhancement was a function of intensity of stimulation. A bilateral effect also occurred. A relationship was observed between enhancement and the presence of prior performance decrement. The results were interpreted as supporting the activation hypothesis.

End-spurt following simple repetitive muscular movement.

An experiment was carried out to study the nature of end-spurt in a task requiring pure muscular activity (tapping a telegraph key) and to compare the findings to those which studied end-spurt in tasks requiring other types of activities. Here, as was found in other tasks, significant end-spurt occurred when Ss believed they were 90% completed. However, in contrast to other tasks, performance improved on the critical trial for all conditions. This was interpreted as being due to arousal resulting from onset of a signal light rather than to any significance the light might have had. It was proposed that a variable influencing end-spurt might be the length of time spent at a task. It was also pointed out that in this type of task the amount of recovery from decrement which occurs through end-spurt is only a small portion of the total decrement which has previously occurred. Optimization of performance level could probably best be achieved through distributed work periods where rest would be introduced prior to the occurrence of decrement.

Factors in Recovery from Performance Decrement: Activation, Inhibition and Warm-up

It has been recently found that rotary pursuit tracking performance can be enhanced as a result of inducing muscular tension by requiring individuals to squeeze a dynamometer as an interpolated activity between tracking trials. The present experiment was designed to determine whether such enhancement would result if the tension inducing activity utilized the same muscular movements as those involved in the rotary pursuit task. In the main condition, Ss were required to overcome 3 in.-lb. of resistance in order to turn a disk at 60 rpm. This interpolated activity significantly enhanced reminiscence beyond that following rest alone. No enhancement occurred in a control condition when there was no resistance to overcome. Another condition in which muscular tension was induced by turning the disk in a direction opposite to that of the pursuit rotor target resulted in an enhancement of reminiscence. A final tension inducing condition in which the disk was turned with the non-tracking hand produced a bilateral enhancement effect. It was generally found that those individuals with the greatest amount of performance decrement tended to show the greatest enhancement. The results of this study were viewed as additional evidence of the influence of changes in activation level upon efficiency of performance.

The Blocked-Random Effect in Pictures and Words

Picture and word recall was examined in conjunction with list organization. 60 subjects studied a list of 30 items, either words or their pictorial equivalents. The 30 words/pictures, members of five conceptual categories, each represented by six exemplars, were presented either blocked by category or in a random order. While pictures were recalled better than words and a standard blocked-random effect was observed, the interaction indicated that the recall advantage of a blocked presentation was restricted to the word lists. A similar pattern emerged for clustering. These findings are discussed in terms of limitations upon the pictorial superiority effect.

FAILURE AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO THE SOCIAL FACILITATION EFFECT: EVIDENCE FOR A LEARNED DRIVE INTERPRETATION OF THE SOCIAL FACILITATION EFFECT

Social facilitation theory states that an audience functions as a conditioned stimulus for generalized drive and that this drive effect is learned through classical conditioning. In the present study an attempt was made to condition classically an aversive drive to an audience by having a subject fail a task in front of an audience. A sample of 61 subjects took part in a 2 × 2 factorial design. Half of the subjects did not perform a first task but only a complex motor task. Half of these subjects performed in the presence of an audience, half without an audience present. Of those subjects exposed to failure on the first task, half performed a second complex motor task in the presence of the same audience. Results indicated that performance of subjects who failed a first task in the presence of an audience and then performed the second task in the presence of that audience was significantly poorer than all of the other groups. The findings were taken as evidence that the social facilitation effect may be based on an aversive learned drive.

The Effect of Rest Following Massed Practice of Continuous and Discrete Motor Tasks

Theories of the rest-related phenomena of reminiscence and warm-up decrement regard them as independent, being due to different factors. In this study it was found that rest following massed practice of a continuous task increased performance (reminiscence) and rest following massed practice of a discrete task lowered performance (warm-up decrement). The near-zero correlation found between the phenomena indicates that they are indeed independent and task-specific. Implications of the findings for the prediction of the effect of rest, and the fact that much motor learning and performance is task-specific, is discussed.

The effect of failure and the nature of the audience on performance of a complex motor task.

Social facilitation theory states that an audience functions as a conditioned stimulus for generalized drive and that this drive effect is learned through classical conditioning. In the present study an attempt was made to classically condition an aversive drive to an audience by having a subject fail a task in front of an audience. A sample of 72 subjects (12 per group) took part in a 3 × 2 factorial design. Half of the subjects were exposed to failure in front of an audience on a first task. These subjects then performed a second complex motor task in front of the same audience who were described as either experts on this second task or as students who were interested in the task (non-expert audience). No differences in performance were found between those groups that had failed a first task and those that had not. However, significant differences in performance were found between the no-audience control, non-expert audience, and expert audience conditions.

Rotary Pursuit Performance as a Function of Sex, Sex-Role, and Intertrial Interval

Rotary pursuit performance (time on target) and reminiscence data were collected for 113 androgynous and feminine men and women under massed or distributed practice conditions. On the final (eighth) block of practice men performed better than women under conditions of massed practice; while no sex differences were found under distributed practice conditions. Under distributed practice conditions androgynous women performed better than feminine women. In addition, men performed better over-all than women, and subjects in the distributed practice condition performed better than subjects in the massed practice condition. Reminiscence data indicated that under massed practice feminine women obtained larger scores than did feminine men and androgynous women. For women sex-role as well as practice condition influenced performance and reminiscence.

Relationship between Sex-Role and Acquisition of Motor Skill

In an experiment examining the relationship between sex-role and acquisition of motor skill, sex-role was related to performance (time-on-target) and reminiscence for women but not men. 15 androgynous, masculine, feminine, and undifferentiated men (n — 60) and women (n = 60) performed 80 15-sec. trials on the pursuit-rotor. Results indicated that the time-on-target performance of men as a group was significantly better than that of women. However, the data indicated that the performance of androgynous women was not significantly different from all groups of men; feminine women showed the poorest performance. Femininity was related to poorer performance only in women. Feminine women also had the highest reminiscence scores (a measure of recovery from performance decrement during 15-sec. rest intervals). For these performance measures (time-on-target and reminiscence) under these conditions, motor skill varied as a function of sex-role for women.