Daniel J Weiss, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor Bradley Paul Wyble, Committee Member Robert L Sainburg, Committee Member Melvin Michael Mark, Program Head/Chair
Keywords:
motor planning language production plan reuse hysteresis motor production sentence construction
Abstract:
The production of a complex sequence of actions requires the use of a hierarchical, abstract plan held in temporary memory. To lessen the cognitive load imposed on temporary memory by planning, individuals tend to reuse recently activated abstract plans and adapt them as needed rather than generate novel plans for each production instance. While this tendency for reuse (i.e., Plan Reuse) has been found in both motor and language production, research on planning in these domains has largely been conducted independently. The current study evaluates parallels in Plan Reuse across domains by comparing participants’ production choices on a motor task and a language task. Participants exhibited analogous patterns of Plan Reuse in both the motor and language tasks such that production on the current trial was influenced by recent production history. The results suggest that Plan Reuse may exist as a domain general heuristic for improving planning and production efficiency.