The perception of isometric forces was examined under normal conditions, during sustained constant force contractions, and during vibration of the muscle tendon. In these experiments a contralateral limb matching procedure was employed, and force and the brachial biceps and triceps electromyogram (EMG) were recorded from each arm. Under normal conditions it was found that smaller forces were consistently overestimated in magnitude. During sustained constant force contractions the matching forces exerted by the unfatigued arm increased linearly as did the EMG of the fatiguing muscle. These results are consistent with force judgements being made with respect to the excitatory input to the reference muscle. It was further determined that during fatigue subjects were unable to dissociate the force of exertion from the motor command generating the contraction. Muscle tendon vibration increased the variability of force judgements and resulted in the overestimation of forces. This appeared to be due to co-contraction of the antagonist triceps muscle during vibration of the contracting biceps. The increase in the perceived magnitude of force during vibration is again consistent with the centrally-mediated theory of force perception.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.71891 |
| Date | January 1983 |
| Creators | Jones, Lynette Anne. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Psychology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 000186400, proquestno: AAINK66628, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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