Five male Ss took part in seven experiments involving absolute judgments of stimuli selected from a continuum of torque. The first experiment required Ss to make judgments on the intensity of sixteen stimuli separated by equal intervals. The results were used to construct individual scales of equal discriminability. These scales were used to select the stimuli for the remaining six experiments in which 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 and 16 stimuli, separated by subjectively equal intervals, were used. An informational analysis was performed on the data of these experiments to determine the capacity of the kinesthetic system to transmit information derived from the inducement of torque. Maximum values of 1.680, 2.050 and 2.524 bits of transmitted information were obtained when the response was considered the output and the input variables were, respectively, the stimulus, the stimulus and subject, and the stimulus, subject and previous stimulus. These results were discussed in relation to information theory and the use of torque information in the closed-loop control of movement. It was concluded that torque-derived information may be available for the control of movement but that the capacity of the kinesthetic system to transmit torque information was less than that reported for amplitude of movement. Kinesthetic after effect was cited as a possible cause of the relatively low transmission. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

Forty, volunteer, University of British Columbia, Physical Education students took part in a study to determine the relationship between the physical stimulus continuum and the psychological continuum of kinesthetic extent of arm movement. The subjects were randomly assigned to one of four conditions. The conditions were chosen to provide tests of three functional criteria, outlined by S. S. Stevens (1957), for differentiating between two classes of continua, prothetic and metathetic, into which the majority of sensory modalities naturally fall. The task for all conditions involved a straight arm movement from the shoulder joint, in a horizontal plane, towards the midline of the body. Condition I involved the psychophysical ratio scaling method of fractionation and from these data the subjective Kine function, Kine = .1010 S¹•⁰⁷⁵, for kinesthetic extent of movement was derived. Condition II employed the psychophysical category production method to derive the category scale for kinesthetic extent of movement, which was found to be linear when plotted against the subjective Kine scale values. In Conditions III and IV, the psychophysical ratio scaling method of fractionation was used and it was determined that the hysteresis effect was not present for kinesthetic extent of movement. The individual results from each condition supported the hypothesis that kinesthetic extent of arm movement is representative of the metathetic class. Therefore, the general conclusion, determined from a synthesis of the three tested functional criteria, was that one attribute of kinesthesis: extent of arm movement, is subserved by a metathetic process. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate