Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1992, 75, 47-58. O Perceptual and Motor Skills 1992
DISTRACTION A N D BODY-FOCUSED HAND MOVEMENTS ' ANDREW N. KENNER University of South Australia Summary.-The hypothesis that apparently irrelevant self- or object-manipulatory hand movements may act as a means of coping with distraction was tested by experimentally manipulating the amount and type of distraction experienced by 10-year-old chddren while they engaged in the Stroop colour-confusion and colour-naming tasks. If the hypothesis was correct, then increases in distraction were expected to be associated with increases in the frequency of these body-focused movements. The external distractions consisted of either the occurrence of a light signalling the need to perform a reaction time task or listening to distracting sounds through headphones. None of the hand movements increased in frequency with increases in secondary distraction, whether the secondary distractor was visual or auditory.
In recent years considerable advances have been made in understanding the nature and significance of much nonverbal behaviour (Argyle, 1988). However, some of the most commonly produced hand movements have defied simple explanation despite more than fifty years of systematic research (Olson, 1930). I n almost all settings subjects can be observed to engage in apparently irrelevant self- or object-manipulation. While a casual scratch of the ear or a rub of the neck might be dismissed as a relatively unimportant "comfort movement," the systematic association of such self- and objectmanipulations with stressful settings (LeCompte, 1981) and the frequent finding in decoding studies that such movements have played a significant role in determining the nature of the attributions reported by observers (Goldberg & Rosenthal, 1986; Harrigan, Kues, & Weber, 1986; Harrigan, Weber, & Kues, 1986; Waxer, 1977) indicate that these body-focused hand movements (Freedman, O'Hanlon, Altman, & Witkin, 1972) have a significant role to play. Recent studies of body-focused hand movements have emphasized their association with more difficult information-processing tasks (Barroso & Feld, 1986; Freedman & Bucci, 1981; Harrigan, 1985). For example, Barroso, Freedman, Grand, and van Meel (1978) examined the body-focused hand movements of subjects engaged in the Stroop colour-confusion task (Stroop, 1935) and the similar, but far less demanding, colour-naming task. They found that the children in their study produced higher frequencies of some types of body-focused movement when engaged in the Stroop colour-confusion task. Freedman and his colleagues have suggested that body-focused
'Address enquiries to A. N. Kemer, Ph.D., University of South Australia, Lorne Avenue, Magill, South Australia 5072.
48
A. N. KENNER
movements were more frequent in such an attentionally demanding setting because they acted as an aid to attention focusing (Barroso, et al., 1978; Freedman, Barroso, Bucci, & Grand, 1978; Freedman & Bucci, 1981). They argue that production of body-focused movement often acts to "shield" the subject from distracting stimuli. "The strategy of shielding appears primarily to function as a means of insulating the speaker from interference cues" (Freedman & Bucci, 1981, p. 246). Freedman and his colleagues' distraction-filtering or attention-focusing model offers some hope of explaining reports of high frequencies of body-focused movement in settings which cannot readily be characterized as stressful (e.g., Wild, Johnson, & McBrayer, 1983). However, most of the testing of this attention model has relied on largely indirect measures of the information-processing demands experienced by the subjects. Correlations between field-dependence measures and body-focused movement (Freedman, et al., 1972; Freedman, et al., 1978; Freedman & Bucci, 1981) have been used as an indicator of an association between information processing and production of body-focused movement. Similarly, differences between the performances of body-focused movement by subject groups who suffered from various psychopathological conditions (Grand, 1977; Grand, Freedman, Steingart, & Buchwald, 1975; Steingart & Freedman, 1975) and thereby presumably differed in information-processing ability (Steingart, Grand, Margolis, Freedman, & Buchwald, 1976) have been used as an indicator of a role for body-focused hand movement in information processing. More recently Freedman and his colleagues have turned to an examination of correlations between the form and frequency of body-focused movement and variations in language performance (Freedman, et al., 1978; Freedman & Bucci, 1981). Unfortunately, d these correlational studies have not clearly demonstrated that the apparent associations between body-focused movement and these external variables are related to attentional processes rather than underlying motivational factors. For example, the increase in body-focused hand movement observed by Barroso, et al. (1978) for the Stroop colour-confusion task might, with equal plausibility, be attributed to the frustrating nature of the colour-confusion task. Frustration has been associated with an increase in the frequency of body-focused movement (Feiring & Lewis, 1979; Kehrer & Tente, 1969). More direct measures of the information-processing requirements experienced by subjects have not generally confirmed this association of attentional demand and production of body-focused movement (Barroso & Feld, 1986; Kenner, 1984). Kenner (1984) examined the body-focused movement behaviour of subjects performing several tasks. A measure of the attentional demand experienced by the subjects was obtained by requiring them to perform a simple R T task while they engaged simultaneously in three primary tasks. The speed
DISTRACTION AND BODY-FOCUSED HAND MOVEMENTS
49
of response of the subjects to the secondary RT-probe task provided an indication of the attentional demand being experienced by the subjects at the time. No significant correlations between the RT-probe measure and frequencies of body-focused movement were observed. If body-focused hand movements act as a "shield" to block the effects of irrelevant distractors, then it would be expected that increases in the level of distraction experienced by the subject should be associated with an increase in the frequency of at least some types of body-focused hand movement. Barroso and Feld (1986) examined the hand movements produced by a small sample of subjects while they engaged in a variety of auditory "shadowing" tasks. The tasks which, judging by the performance of the subjects, were the most attentionally demanding were not systematically associated with higher frequencies of body-focused hand movement. If the higher frequency of body-focused movement observed by Barroso, et al. (1978) for the Stroop colour-confusion task was the result of the greater level of distraction experienced by these subjects, then it should be possible to increase the frequency of body-focused hand movement associated with the two Stroop tasks by the inclusion of additional distracting stimuli. In Exp. 1 subjects performed the two Stroop tasks while experiencing secondary visual distractors. In Exp. 2 the subjects again performed the two Stroop tasks while experiencing a secondary auditory distractor. The aim of this experiment was to determine whether increasing the amount of distraction experienced by the subjects while they performed the Stroop colour-confusion and colour-naming tasks increased the frequency of the subjects' body-focused hand movements. Method Subjects.-The subjects were 49 fifth-grade children attending The Heights school, Modbury, Australia. The mean age of the 28 boys and 2 1 girls was 10 years and 0 months at the commencement of the study. The subjects were essentially the same age as those employed by Barroso, et al. (1978). Procedure.-Each of the subjects completed two tasks. These were the Stroop colour-confusion task (Stroop) and the Stroop colour-naming task (Control) (Stroop, 1935). On the Stroop task the subjects were required to indicate the colour ink in which a series of colour words were printed. The colour word and the colour of the ink in whch the word was printed never corresponded, though the same four colours were employed for both the words and the colours of the inks (red, green, yellow, and blue). Many variations on the basic Stroop confusion task exist (Jensen & Rohwer, 1966). In the current study the lettering was presented on a large white card (50
50
A. N. KENNER
cm x 50 cm) so that it could be read easily at a distance without pointing. The letters were printed .5 cm in height, in 10 rows of 10 words. The order of the stimuli on the card was randomly determined, with the restrictions that the same number of each colour occurred across the card and no adjacent serial repetitions of the same colour inks were permitted. The standard Stroop instructions were employed. These required the subjects to identify as quickly and as accurately as possible the colour of the ink in which the words were written, while ignoring the words themselves. Prior to the performance of the Stroop task the subjects were required to complete successfully two 10-item rows of Stroop stimuli, both to ensure their understanding of the instructions and to provide an opportunity for practice. The same Stroop card and practice examples were employed for all subjects. This task was virtually identical to that employed by Barroso, et al. (1978). The Control task was very similar .to the confusion task. The same size card and colours of ink were employed. The order of the coloured inks in the matrix was identical to that of the Stroop card. However, rather than the coloured inks taking the form of distracting colour words, asterisks were used. The number of asterisks in each item in the 10 x 10 matrix corresponded to the number of letters in the corresponding colour word on the Stroop card. The cards were presented on a stand so that they were approximately at the subject's eye level. I n most Stroop studies the subject is required to read once through the stimulus items for each of the tasks (Jensen & Rohwer, 1966). This was the practice employed by Barroso, et al. (1978). To control for the possibility that task duration may influence the frequencies of hand movement the subjects in the current study were required to return to the beginning of the card and continue the task until 5 rnin. had elapsed. No attempt was made to correct the subjects if they made errors in their stroop-task responses. Secondary distraction task.-To manipulate the distraction experienced by the subjects they were required to carry out a reaction-time task in conjunction with each of the Stroop tasks. The reaction-time task required the subjects to press a foot button as quickly as possible after the onset of a light, presented in their visual periphery, while they performed the relevant Stroop tasks. The R T stimulus light was a 1.5-volt torch giobe mounted on a board. All subjects had a 5-min. practice with the R T task alone before commencing either of the Stroop tasks. The light for the RT task was mounted approximately 30° to the subject's right. The Stroop cards were mounted approximately 30' to the subject's left. Thus the stimulus light was visible in the periphery of the subject's vision. If, after five seconds of stimulus onset, the subjects had not
DISTRACTION AND BODY-FOCUSED HAND MOVEMENTS
51
pressed the foot-button they were verbally reminded of this requirement. No subject needed to be reminded more than once. The subjects were randomly assigned to three groups. The No-RT group performed the Stroop and Control tasks without the secondary distraction of an RT task. The 10-RT group experienced 10-RT stimuli during their 5-min. tasks. The ten stimuli were preset to a random occurrence with the restriction that only two occurred in each minute and that stimuli were separated by a minimum of 5 sec. Each subject experienced the same sequence of stimuli for both tasks. The 20-RT group experienced 20-RT stimuli during their 5-min. performance, four in each minute. Throughout the performance of the Stroop tasks the experimenter was concealed behind a screen. Apparatus.-A National VHS video cassette recorder (NV-3000) and camera (WV3200N) recorded the movements and speech of a l l the subjects. The sound was recorded with an AKG microphone. No attempt was made to conceal the video camera. Hand-movement analysis.-The schema for hand-movement analysis developed by Freedman, et al. (1972) was employed here. This recognizes two basic classes of body-focused hand movement. Very brief (less than three seconds in duration) body- or irrelevant object-manipulations were recorded as Discrete body-focused hand movements. The longer duration Continuous bodyfocused hand movements were further subdivided into Hand-to-hand rnovements, in which one hand manipulated the other, Direct bodyfocused movements, which involved other bodily manipulations, and finally Indirect bodyfocused hand movements, which involved apparently irrelevant manipulations of surrounding objects or clothing. The duration of each movement bout was measured by the experimenter using a stopwatch during repeated viewing of the videotapes. The reliability of this type of scoring procedure has been uniformly h g h in all previously reported studies (Freedman, et al., 1972; Friesen, Ekman, & Wallbott, 1979). To facilitate comparisons between the findings obtained by Barroso, et al. (1978) and those reported here, hand-movement scores were computed both for the full 5-min. interval and for the first pass through the card. This second score directly corresponds to the measure used by Barroso, et al. (1978).
Results The mean frequencies of each of the categories of hand movement for each of the two tasks and each of the three groups are displayed in Table 1. I t is clear from examination of the means that there is no simple linear increase in frequency of body-focused movement with level of distraction. A repeated-measures design analysis of variance calculated on the frequency of Total continuous body-focused movement, the two Stroop tasks,
52
A. N. KENNER M
TABLE 1 ~ FREQUENCIES N OF BODY-FOCUSED MOVEMENT FOR THE DISTRACTION TASKS
Hand Movement
No-RT 10-RT 20-RT
Hand Movement
No-RT 10-RT 20-RT
Stroop Control 14.2 Hand-to-hand 28.4 17.9 30.0 Hand-to-hand 30.9 3.4 Direct 2.2 4.0 3.7 4.3 Direct Indirect 7.2 11.1 7.0 11.2 8.5 Indirect Discrete 2.4 2.8 3.2 Discrete 2.9 2.8 Nofe.-The scores are expressed as a percentage of the total task duration (5 min.).
19.6 3.5 13.6 3.2
and the distraction level group showed that there were no significant differences between the total continuous body-focused movement frequencies for the three distraction groups (F,,,, = 2.8, p>0.05). There were also no significant differences between the body-focused movement frequencies for the Stroop and Control tasks (F,,,, = 1.2, p>0.05). Similar analyses conducted on the Discrete movements also did not identify any movement differences between the distraction groups (F,,,, = 0.4, p>0.05) or between the Control and Stroop tasks (F,,,, = 0.1, p > 0.05). Similar analyses conducted on the three continuous body-focused rnovement measures (Hand-to-hand, Direct, and Indirect) individually again showed no significant differences between the distraction groups (F,,,, = 2.6, 0.2, and 0.3, p > 0.05, respectively) or between the Control and Stroop tasks (F,,,, = 1.0, 2.5, and 0.5, p > 0.05, respectively). As has been reported by all investigators of the Stroop phenomenon (Jensen & Rohwer, 1966), the colour-confusion (Stroop) card was always completed more slowly than its colour-naming control. I n all cases in t h i s investigation the subjects were slower to complete the Stroop card on the first pass (t,, = 17.6, p0.05) or the differences in distraction level (F,,,, = 1.4, p>0.05) were statistically significant. An analysis of variance computed on the duration of the Discrete scores also does not show any significant effect of distraction group assignment (F,,4,= 0.09, p > 0.1). The means for - -
DISTRACTION AND BODY-FOCUSED HAND MOVEMENTS TABLE 2 MEAN FREQUENCIES OF BODY-FOCUSED MOVEMENT FORTHE FIRSTPASSTHROUGH THE STROOP CARDS Hand Movement No-RT 10-RT Stroop Hand-to-hand 22.7 19.4 3.7 4.3 Direct 7.2 Indirect 11.0 Discrete 4.0 3.6 No!e.-The scores are expressed as a the fist pass through the card.
20-RT 29.2 4.0 11.4 2.8
Hand Movement No-RT 10-RT 20-RT Control Hand-to-hand 32.3 15.0 23.6 Direct 3.8 2.6 3.2 Indirect 10.1 8.7 12.7 1.8 Discrete 2.8 2.5
percentage of the time taken for the subject to complete
the Discrete movements for the Stroop task, while generally higher, did not differ significantly from the Control task scores (F,,,, = 3.3, p>0.05). Spearman rank-order correlations between the subjects' performances on the Stroop and Control tasks are ~ r o v i d e din Table 3 . These show a statistically significant level of individual ordinal consistency in performance of body-focused movement across these two tasks. TABLE 3 SPEARMAN RANK-ORDER CORRELATION COEFFICIENTS BETWEENFREQUENCIES OF BODY-FOCUSED MOVEMENT FORTHE Two STROOPTASKS Hand Movement Hand-to-hand Direct Indirect Discrete
Total Scores 0.417 0.51t 0.52t 0.63t
First Pass 0.29* 0.46t
0.48t 0.357
*p 0.05).
GENERAL DISCUSSION The results obtained in this study are unfortunately not supportive of a model of the occurrence of body-focused movement which postulates that these movements are a means of shielding the subject from external distraction. No increases in the frequency of any of the measures of body-focused hand movement were associated with the distracting settings. The modality in which the distracting stimuli were presented appeared to make little difference. Kenner (1984, 1989) reported relatively low ordinal consistency in pro~ duction of body-focused movement for a group of subjects ~ e r f o r m i ndifferent tasks. The high ordinal correlations observed in Exp. 1 and Exp. 2 of this study are quite different. I t appears that the nature of the tasks is an important influence upon consistencies displayed by individual subjects. This finding reinforces the view that individual subjects reacted in similar ways to the two Stroop tasks, regardless of concurrent distraction. While a number of authors have noted associations between occurrence of body-focused movement and apparent information-processing requirements
DISTRACTION AND BODY-FOCUSED HAND MOVEMENTS
57
(Barroso & Feld, 1986; Freedman & Bucci, 1981; Harrigan, 1985), the complex relationship between motivational processes and information-processing performance (Zajonc, Pietromonaco, & Bergh, 1982) makes it difficult to disentangle the underlying precursors to production of body-focused movement. A more comprehensive understanding of performance of body-focused movement will require a willingness on the part of investigators to employ techniques which wd examine both the short-term motivational and the information-processing requirements being experienced by the subject. When such information is at hand, then we may be in a position to examine further the role of body-focused hand movements in information processing. REFERENCES
ARGYLE, M. (1988) Bodily communication. London: Methuen. BAFSOSO,F., & FELD,J. K. (1986) Self-touching and attentional processes: the role of task difficulty, selection stage, and sex differences. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 10, 51-64. BARROSO, F., FREEDMAN, N., GRAND,S., & V A N MEEL,J. (1978) Evocation of two types of hand movements in information processing. Journal of Experimentul Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 4, 32 1-329. FE~ING C.,, & LEWIS,M. (1979) Sex and n e differences in young children's reactions to frusr ~ Lewis subjects. Child Development, 50, tration: a further look at the ~ o l d % e and 848-853.
FREEDMAN, N., BAFSOSO,F., BUCCI,W., & GRAND, S. (1978) The bodily manifestnt~onsol listening. Psychoanalysis and Confemporary Thought, 1, 157-194. FREEDMAN, N., & BUCCI,W. (1981) O D kinetic filtering in associative monologue. Semiotics, 34, 225-249.
FREEDMAN, N., O'HANLON, J., ALTMAN,P., & WITKIN, H. A. (1972) The imprint of psycholo ical differentiation on kinetic behavior in varying communicative contexts. Journal of A fnormal Psychology, 79, 239-258. FRIESEN,W. V., EKMAN,P, & WALLBOTT, H. (1979) Measuring hand movements. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 4, 97-112. GOLDBERG, S., & ROSENTHAL, R. (1986) Self-touching behavior in the job interview: antecedents and consequences. Journal of Nonverbal Behauior, 10, 65-80. GRAND, S. (1977) O n hand movements during s eecb studies of the role of self-stimulation in communication under conditions of psycl!opathology, sensory deficit, and bilingualism. In N. Freedman & S. Grand (Eds.), Communicative strucfures and psychic structure. New York: Plenum. Pp. 199-221. GRAND,S., FREEDMAN, N., STEINGART, I., & BUCHWALD, C. (1975) Communicative behavior in schizophrema Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 161, 243-306. HARRIGAN, J. A. (1985) Self-touching as an indicator of underlying affect and language processes. Socral Sc~enceand Medicine, 20, 1161-1168. HARRIGAN, J. A , , KUES,J. R., & WEBER,J. G . (1986) Impressions of hand movements: selftouching and gestures. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 63, 503-516. HARRIGAN, J. A,, WEBER,J. G., & KUES,J. R. (1986) Attributions of self-touching performed in spontaneous and posed modes. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 4, 433-446. JENSEN,A. R., & ROHWER,W. D. (1966) The Stroop Color-Word Test: a review. Acta Psychologica, 25, 36-93. KEHRER,H . , & TENTE,D. (1969) Observations of displacement activities in children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 10, 259-268. KENNER,A. N . (1984) The effect of task differences, attention and personality on the frequency of body-focused hand movements. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 8, 159-171. KENNER,A. N. (1989) Personality and body-focused hand movements. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 68, 907-913. LECOMFTE,W. A. (1981) The ecology of anxiety: situational stress and rate of self-stimulation in Turkey. Journal of Personali~and Social Psychology, 40, 712-721.
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~~THEW K. SA,, , & BRUNSON, B. I. (1979) Allocation of attention and the Type A coronary prone behavior pattern. Journal of Personalily and Social Psychology, 37, 2081-2090. OLSON, W. C. (1930) The incidence of nervous habits in children. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 25, 75-92. STEINGART, I., & FREEDMAN, N . (1975) The organization of body-focused kinesic behavior and language construction in schizophrenic and depressed states. Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Science, 4, 423-450. STEINGART, I . , GRAND,S., MARGOLIS, R . , FREEDMAN, N., & BUCI~WALD, C. (1976) A study of the representation of anxiety in chronic schizophrenia. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 85, 535-542. STROOP,J. R. (1935) Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimenkzl Psychology, 18, 643-662. WAXER,P. H . (1977) Nonverbal cues for anxiety, an examination of emotional leakage. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 86, 306-314. WUD, H., JOHNSON,W. R., & MCBRAYER, D. J. (1983) Gestural behavior as a response to external stimuli. Pmceptual and Motor Skillr, 56, 547-550. ZAJONC,R. B., PIETROMONACO, P., & BERGH,J. (1982) Inde endence and interaction of affect and cognition. In M. Clark & S. Fiske (Eds.), ~ J e c r and cognition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Pp. 211-227. Accepted May 17, 1392.
DISTRACTION A N D BODY-FOCUSED HAND MOVEMENTS ' ANDREW N. KENNER University of South Australia Summary.-The hypothesis that apparently irrelevant self- or object-manipulatory hand movements may act as a means of coping with distraction was tested by experimentally manipulating the amount and type of distraction experienced by 10-year-old chddren while they engaged in the Stroop colour-confusion and colour-naming tasks. If the hypothesis was correct, then increases in distraction were expected to be associated with increases in the frequency of these body-focused movements. The external distractions consisted of either the occurrence of a light signalling the need to perform a reaction time task or listening to distracting sounds through headphones. None of the hand movements increased in frequency with increases in secondary distraction, whether the secondary distractor was visual or auditory.
In recent years considerable advances have been made in understanding the nature and significance of much nonverbal behaviour (Argyle, 1988). However, some of the most commonly produced hand movements have defied simple explanation despite more than fifty years of systematic research (Olson, 1930). I n almost all settings subjects can be observed to engage in apparently irrelevant self- or object-manipulation. While a casual scratch of the ear or a rub of the neck might be dismissed as a relatively unimportant "comfort movement," the systematic association of such self- and objectmanipulations with stressful settings (LeCompte, 1981) and the frequent finding in decoding studies that such movements have played a significant role in determining the nature of the attributions reported by observers (Goldberg & Rosenthal, 1986; Harrigan, Kues, & Weber, 1986; Harrigan, Weber, & Kues, 1986; Waxer, 1977) indicate that these body-focused hand movements (Freedman, O'Hanlon, Altman, & Witkin, 1972) have a significant role to play. Recent studies of body-focused hand movements have emphasized their association with more difficult information-processing tasks (Barroso & Feld, 1986; Freedman & Bucci, 1981; Harrigan, 1985). For example, Barroso, Freedman, Grand, and van Meel (1978) examined the body-focused hand movements of subjects engaged in the Stroop colour-confusion task (Stroop, 1935) and the similar, but far less demanding, colour-naming task. They found that the children in their study produced higher frequencies of some types of body-focused movement when engaged in the Stroop colour-confusion task. Freedman and his colleagues have suggested that body-focused
'Address enquiries to A. N. Kemer, Ph.D., University of South Australia, Lorne Avenue, Magill, South Australia 5072.
48
A. N. KENNER
movements were more frequent in such an attentionally demanding setting because they acted as an aid to attention focusing (Barroso, et al., 1978; Freedman, Barroso, Bucci, & Grand, 1978; Freedman & Bucci, 1981). They argue that production of body-focused movement often acts to "shield" the subject from distracting stimuli. "The strategy of shielding appears primarily to function as a means of insulating the speaker from interference cues" (Freedman & Bucci, 1981, p. 246). Freedman and his colleagues' distraction-filtering or attention-focusing model offers some hope of explaining reports of high frequencies of body-focused movement in settings which cannot readily be characterized as stressful (e.g., Wild, Johnson, & McBrayer, 1983). However, most of the testing of this attention model has relied on largely indirect measures of the information-processing demands experienced by the subjects. Correlations between field-dependence measures and body-focused movement (Freedman, et al., 1972; Freedman, et al., 1978; Freedman & Bucci, 1981) have been used as an indicator of an association between information processing and production of body-focused movement. Similarly, differences between the performances of body-focused movement by subject groups who suffered from various psychopathological conditions (Grand, 1977; Grand, Freedman, Steingart, & Buchwald, 1975; Steingart & Freedman, 1975) and thereby presumably differed in information-processing ability (Steingart, Grand, Margolis, Freedman, & Buchwald, 1976) have been used as an indicator of a role for body-focused hand movement in information processing. More recently Freedman and his colleagues have turned to an examination of correlations between the form and frequency of body-focused movement and variations in language performance (Freedman, et al., 1978; Freedman & Bucci, 1981). Unfortunately, d these correlational studies have not clearly demonstrated that the apparent associations between body-focused movement and these external variables are related to attentional processes rather than underlying motivational factors. For example, the increase in body-focused hand movement observed by Barroso, et al. (1978) for the Stroop colour-confusion task might, with equal plausibility, be attributed to the frustrating nature of the colour-confusion task. Frustration has been associated with an increase in the frequency of body-focused movement (Feiring & Lewis, 1979; Kehrer & Tente, 1969). More direct measures of the information-processing requirements experienced by subjects have not generally confirmed this association of attentional demand and production of body-focused movement (Barroso & Feld, 1986; Kenner, 1984). Kenner (1984) examined the body-focused movement behaviour of subjects performing several tasks. A measure of the attentional demand experienced by the subjects was obtained by requiring them to perform a simple R T task while they engaged simultaneously in three primary tasks. The speed
DISTRACTION AND BODY-FOCUSED HAND MOVEMENTS
49
of response of the subjects to the secondary RT-probe task provided an indication of the attentional demand being experienced by the subjects at the time. No significant correlations between the RT-probe measure and frequencies of body-focused movement were observed. If body-focused hand movements act as a "shield" to block the effects of irrelevant distractors, then it would be expected that increases in the level of distraction experienced by the subject should be associated with an increase in the frequency of at least some types of body-focused hand movement. Barroso and Feld (1986) examined the hand movements produced by a small sample of subjects while they engaged in a variety of auditory "shadowing" tasks. The tasks which, judging by the performance of the subjects, were the most attentionally demanding were not systematically associated with higher frequencies of body-focused hand movement. If the higher frequency of body-focused movement observed by Barroso, et al. (1978) for the Stroop colour-confusion task was the result of the greater level of distraction experienced by these subjects, then it should be possible to increase the frequency of body-focused hand movement associated with the two Stroop tasks by the inclusion of additional distracting stimuli. In Exp. 1 subjects performed the two Stroop tasks while experiencing secondary visual distractors. In Exp. 2 the subjects again performed the two Stroop tasks while experiencing a secondary auditory distractor. The aim of this experiment was to determine whether increasing the amount of distraction experienced by the subjects while they performed the Stroop colour-confusion and colour-naming tasks increased the frequency of the subjects' body-focused hand movements. Method Subjects.-The subjects were 49 fifth-grade children attending The Heights school, Modbury, Australia. The mean age of the 28 boys and 2 1 girls was 10 years and 0 months at the commencement of the study. The subjects were essentially the same age as those employed by Barroso, et al. (1978). Procedure.-Each of the subjects completed two tasks. These were the Stroop colour-confusion task (Stroop) and the Stroop colour-naming task (Control) (Stroop, 1935). On the Stroop task the subjects were required to indicate the colour ink in which a series of colour words were printed. The colour word and the colour of the ink in whch the word was printed never corresponded, though the same four colours were employed for both the words and the colours of the inks (red, green, yellow, and blue). Many variations on the basic Stroop confusion task exist (Jensen & Rohwer, 1966). In the current study the lettering was presented on a large white card (50
50
A. N. KENNER
cm x 50 cm) so that it could be read easily at a distance without pointing. The letters were printed .5 cm in height, in 10 rows of 10 words. The order of the stimuli on the card was randomly determined, with the restrictions that the same number of each colour occurred across the card and no adjacent serial repetitions of the same colour inks were permitted. The standard Stroop instructions were employed. These required the subjects to identify as quickly and as accurately as possible the colour of the ink in which the words were written, while ignoring the words themselves. Prior to the performance of the Stroop task the subjects were required to complete successfully two 10-item rows of Stroop stimuli, both to ensure their understanding of the instructions and to provide an opportunity for practice. The same Stroop card and practice examples were employed for all subjects. This task was virtually identical to that employed by Barroso, et al. (1978). The Control task was very similar .to the confusion task. The same size card and colours of ink were employed. The order of the coloured inks in the matrix was identical to that of the Stroop card. However, rather than the coloured inks taking the form of distracting colour words, asterisks were used. The number of asterisks in each item in the 10 x 10 matrix corresponded to the number of letters in the corresponding colour word on the Stroop card. The cards were presented on a stand so that they were approximately at the subject's eye level. I n most Stroop studies the subject is required to read once through the stimulus items for each of the tasks (Jensen & Rohwer, 1966). This was the practice employed by Barroso, et al. (1978). To control for the possibility that task duration may influence the frequencies of hand movement the subjects in the current study were required to return to the beginning of the card and continue the task until 5 rnin. had elapsed. No attempt was made to correct the subjects if they made errors in their stroop-task responses. Secondary distraction task.-To manipulate the distraction experienced by the subjects they were required to carry out a reaction-time task in conjunction with each of the Stroop tasks. The reaction-time task required the subjects to press a foot button as quickly as possible after the onset of a light, presented in their visual periphery, while they performed the relevant Stroop tasks. The R T stimulus light was a 1.5-volt torch giobe mounted on a board. All subjects had a 5-min. practice with the R T task alone before commencing either of the Stroop tasks. The light for the RT task was mounted approximately 30° to the subject's right. The Stroop cards were mounted approximately 30' to the subject's left. Thus the stimulus light was visible in the periphery of the subject's vision. If, after five seconds of stimulus onset, the subjects had not
DISTRACTION AND BODY-FOCUSED HAND MOVEMENTS
51
pressed the foot-button they were verbally reminded of this requirement. No subject needed to be reminded more than once. The subjects were randomly assigned to three groups. The No-RT group performed the Stroop and Control tasks without the secondary distraction of an RT task. The 10-RT group experienced 10-RT stimuli during their 5-min. tasks. The ten stimuli were preset to a random occurrence with the restriction that only two occurred in each minute and that stimuli were separated by a minimum of 5 sec. Each subject experienced the same sequence of stimuli for both tasks. The 20-RT group experienced 20-RT stimuli during their 5-min. performance, four in each minute. Throughout the performance of the Stroop tasks the experimenter was concealed behind a screen. Apparatus.-A National VHS video cassette recorder (NV-3000) and camera (WV3200N) recorded the movements and speech of a l l the subjects. The sound was recorded with an AKG microphone. No attempt was made to conceal the video camera. Hand-movement analysis.-The schema for hand-movement analysis developed by Freedman, et al. (1972) was employed here. This recognizes two basic classes of body-focused hand movement. Very brief (less than three seconds in duration) body- or irrelevant object-manipulations were recorded as Discrete body-focused hand movements. The longer duration Continuous bodyfocused hand movements were further subdivided into Hand-to-hand rnovements, in which one hand manipulated the other, Direct bodyfocused movements, which involved other bodily manipulations, and finally Indirect bodyfocused hand movements, which involved apparently irrelevant manipulations of surrounding objects or clothing. The duration of each movement bout was measured by the experimenter using a stopwatch during repeated viewing of the videotapes. The reliability of this type of scoring procedure has been uniformly h g h in all previously reported studies (Freedman, et al., 1972; Friesen, Ekman, & Wallbott, 1979). To facilitate comparisons between the findings obtained by Barroso, et al. (1978) and those reported here, hand-movement scores were computed both for the full 5-min. interval and for the first pass through the card. This second score directly corresponds to the measure used by Barroso, et al. (1978).
Results The mean frequencies of each of the categories of hand movement for each of the two tasks and each of the three groups are displayed in Table 1. I t is clear from examination of the means that there is no simple linear increase in frequency of body-focused movement with level of distraction. A repeated-measures design analysis of variance calculated on the frequency of Total continuous body-focused movement, the two Stroop tasks,
52
A. N. KENNER M
TABLE 1 ~ FREQUENCIES N OF BODY-FOCUSED MOVEMENT FOR THE DISTRACTION TASKS
Hand Movement
No-RT 10-RT 20-RT
Hand Movement
No-RT 10-RT 20-RT
Stroop Control 14.2 Hand-to-hand 28.4 17.9 30.0 Hand-to-hand 30.9 3.4 Direct 2.2 4.0 3.7 4.3 Direct Indirect 7.2 11.1 7.0 11.2 8.5 Indirect Discrete 2.4 2.8 3.2 Discrete 2.9 2.8 Nofe.-The scores are expressed as a percentage of the total task duration (5 min.).
19.6 3.5 13.6 3.2
and the distraction level group showed that there were no significant differences between the total continuous body-focused movement frequencies for the three distraction groups (F,,,, = 2.8, p>0.05). There were also no significant differences between the body-focused movement frequencies for the Stroop and Control tasks (F,,,, = 1.2, p>0.05). Similar analyses conducted on the Discrete movements also did not identify any movement differences between the distraction groups (F,,,, = 0.4, p>0.05) or between the Control and Stroop tasks (F,,,, = 0.1, p > 0.05). Similar analyses conducted on the three continuous body-focused rnovement measures (Hand-to-hand, Direct, and Indirect) individually again showed no significant differences between the distraction groups (F,,,, = 2.6, 0.2, and 0.3, p > 0.05, respectively) or between the Control and Stroop tasks (F,,,, = 1.0, 2.5, and 0.5, p > 0.05, respectively). As has been reported by all investigators of the Stroop phenomenon (Jensen & Rohwer, 1966), the colour-confusion (Stroop) card was always completed more slowly than its colour-naming control. I n all cases in t h i s investigation the subjects were slower to complete the Stroop card on the first pass (t,, = 17.6, p0.05) or the differences in distraction level (F,,,, = 1.4, p>0.05) were statistically significant. An analysis of variance computed on the duration of the Discrete scores also does not show any significant effect of distraction group assignment (F,,4,= 0.09, p > 0.1). The means for - -
DISTRACTION AND BODY-FOCUSED HAND MOVEMENTS TABLE 2 MEAN FREQUENCIES OF BODY-FOCUSED MOVEMENT FORTHE FIRSTPASSTHROUGH THE STROOP CARDS Hand Movement No-RT 10-RT Stroop Hand-to-hand 22.7 19.4 3.7 4.3 Direct 7.2 Indirect 11.0 Discrete 4.0 3.6 No!e.-The scores are expressed as a the fist pass through the card.
20-RT 29.2 4.0 11.4 2.8
Hand Movement No-RT 10-RT 20-RT Control Hand-to-hand 32.3 15.0 23.6 Direct 3.8 2.6 3.2 Indirect 10.1 8.7 12.7 1.8 Discrete 2.8 2.5
percentage of the time taken for the subject to complete
the Discrete movements for the Stroop task, while generally higher, did not differ significantly from the Control task scores (F,,,, = 3.3, p>0.05). Spearman rank-order correlations between the subjects' performances on the Stroop and Control tasks are ~ r o v i d e din Table 3 . These show a statistically significant level of individual ordinal consistency in performance of body-focused movement across these two tasks. TABLE 3 SPEARMAN RANK-ORDER CORRELATION COEFFICIENTS BETWEENFREQUENCIES OF BODY-FOCUSED MOVEMENT FORTHE Two STROOPTASKS Hand Movement Hand-to-hand Direct Indirect Discrete
Total Scores 0.417 0.51t 0.52t 0.63t
First Pass 0.29* 0.46t
0.48t 0.357
*p 0.05).
GENERAL DISCUSSION The results obtained in this study are unfortunately not supportive of a model of the occurrence of body-focused movement which postulates that these movements are a means of shielding the subject from external distraction. No increases in the frequency of any of the measures of body-focused hand movement were associated with the distracting settings. The modality in which the distracting stimuli were presented appeared to make little difference. Kenner (1984, 1989) reported relatively low ordinal consistency in pro~ duction of body-focused movement for a group of subjects ~ e r f o r m i ndifferent tasks. The high ordinal correlations observed in Exp. 1 and Exp. 2 of this study are quite different. I t appears that the nature of the tasks is an important influence upon consistencies displayed by individual subjects. This finding reinforces the view that individual subjects reacted in similar ways to the two Stroop tasks, regardless of concurrent distraction. While a number of authors have noted associations between occurrence of body-focused movement and apparent information-processing requirements
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57
(Barroso & Feld, 1986; Freedman & Bucci, 1981; Harrigan, 1985), the complex relationship between motivational processes and information-processing performance (Zajonc, Pietromonaco, & Bergh, 1982) makes it difficult to disentangle the underlying precursors to production of body-focused movement. A more comprehensive understanding of performance of body-focused movement will require a willingness on the part of investigators to employ techniques which wd examine both the short-term motivational and the information-processing requirements being experienced by the subject. When such information is at hand, then we may be in a position to examine further the role of body-focused hand movements in information processing. REFERENCES
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