An effort was made to identify the determinants of response programming time (RPT) which varies as a function of the nature of a response to be produced, i.e., response complexity (according to Henry's memory drum theory). The viability of the componential approach was tested in which RT was hypothesized to be related to the number of response elements, their constituent elements, and their interorganization involved in a particular response. Also investigated was the appropriateness of two RT paradigms (simple vs. choice) in the detection of the RPT effect. / A response element was conceptualized as a coordinative structure (Turvey, 1977) and different types of finger tapping responses (assumed to differ in relation to the number of coordinative structures involved, their constituent elements, and inter-element organization) were used as experimental tasks. Two experiments were conducted, each addressing theoretical and methodological issues, respectively. / In Experiment 1 (N = 18), tested was the validity of a coordinative structure as a real entity of a response element and as a determiner of RPT. It was shown that not all of the variables pertaining to the coordinative structure had systematic relationships with the length of simple RTs. These findings lent partial support to the hypotheses posed. Experiment 2 (N = 16), concerned the methodological issue, revealed that the response effects were different as a function of the RT conditions analyzed. That is, RT effects were significant in the simple RT condition but not in the choice RT condition. These results were neither consistent with Klapp's (1977) preprogramming interpretation nor in conformance with Henry's (1980) and Sternberg et al. (1978) interpretation based on confounding effects. Also the data were not congruent with RT patterns accountable in terms of the pattern-analytic interpretation proposed in the present investigation as an alternative to the traditional approaches. / It was concluded that a coordinative structure is not an unequivocal unit of a response which determines RPT in a systematic way. Also, the RPT effect is associated with RT paradigms utilized, for reasons that are presently unclear. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 44-09, Section: B, page: 2923. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1983.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_75181 |
| Contributors | KIM, KEE-WOONG., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 136 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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