Name: Julie Harrison

Master’s Thesis Proposal Meeting
Date: Wednesday, December 9th

Time: 12:00-1:30pm

Location: https://bluejeans.com/919668146 (Meeting ID: 919 668 146)

Advisor: Jamie Gorman, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)

Thesis Committee members:

Jamie Gorman, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)

Bruce Walker, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)

Chris Wiese, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)

Title: Characteristic Lag and the Intermanual Speed Advantage

Abstract: Previous research has found evidence for the intermanual speed advantage, wherein novice actors perform a visually-guided, two-handed task faster with one hand from each member of a dyad (i.e., intermanually) compared to when one actor completes the task with their own two hands (i.e., bimanually). The intermanual speed advantage is reversed or erased, however, after the task has been well-practiced by both actors bimanually. Furthermore, visuomotor coupling (i.e., coupling between eye and hand movements) has been found to underlie the presence of the intermanual speed advantage in novices and its erasure in experienced actors. This is due to a reduced reliance on visual input as the execution of the manual task becomes more fluent. Using secondary data, the present proposal seeks to further investigate how visuomotor coupling changes as a function of previous bimanual practice. This will be done through a characteristic lag analysis, a dynamical systems metric that will assess how close in time and space the gaze and hands are while actors complete a simulated laparoscopic cutting task. It is proposed that the individual visuomotor coordination of the component actors will impact the execution of the task by the dyad in the intermanual condition, and that this change in coordination will depend on previous bimanual practice. Specifically, it is hypothesized that the lag between the gaze and the hands of novice actors will be shorter from that of their dyad in the intermanual trials, suggesting less coupling in the intermanual condition. However, in experienced actors with previous bimanual practice, the actor with the longer lag value will impose a ceiling on the dyad in intermanual trails preventing them for uncoupling further. This pattern of results would demonstrate how changes in visuomotor coupling lag help account for the erasure of the intermanual speed advantage after previous bimanual practice.