Interactions between Speech and Finger Movements
Anne Smith, David H. McFarland, Christine Maria Weber · Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research · 1986
Under the dynamic perspective for motor control, movement is viewed as an "emergent" property, arising from cooperative relationships among limit-cycle oscillators. This is in contrast to more traditional approaches to motor control in which a central representation of movement is usually assumed to exist. The assertion that coordination of movement arises from interactions between oscillatory processes leads to some unexpected predictions. In particular, interactions between frequency and amplitude of simultaneously performed speech and manual tasks are predicted, because the organism "parameterizes" all ongoing oscillatory processes as a "total unit." Using quantitative analyses, we have demonstrated that interactions between speaking and finger tapping do occur in both the amplitude and frequency domains. Such interactions, however, do not appear to be as simple as those predicted by proponents of the dynamic pattern perspective.