Irrelevant idiosyncratic acts as preparatory, confirmatory, or transitional phases in motor behaviour
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dDepartment of Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA
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Motor behaviours typically include acts that may seem irrelevant for the goal of the task. These unnecessary idiosyncratic acts are excessively manifested in certain activities, such as sports or compulsive rituals. Using the shared performance (commonness) of acts as a proxy for their relevance to the current task, we analysed motor behaviour in daily tasks, sport-related tasks, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) tasks. For each task, these motor behaviours comprised common acts that were performed by all the individuals, and idiosyncratic acts that were performed by only some individuals. In all three tasks there was a temporal section that included all the common acts (termed ‘body’). This body section was preceded by a sequence of idiosyncratic acts that we termed ‘head’, and was followed by another sequence of idiosyncratic acts that we termed ‘tail’. While both head and tail sections were relatively short in the daily tasks, the head was relatively long and the tail largely absent in sport-related tasks, which have a definite end and high stakes. In contrast, OCD behaviour had a relatively long tail. In light of these results, we suggest that the head is a preparatory phase and the tail a confirmatory phase. The head may be viewed as a warm-up phase for the pragmatic section of the task (‘body’), and the tail as a cool-down phase. Finally, we suggest that rituals may be viewed as a descendant of pragmatic activities, which differentially feature a greater terminal phase of idiosyncratic acts in OCD, and an extended initial phase of idiosyncratic acts in sport rituals.
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Irrelevant idiosyncratic acts as preparatory, confirmatory, or transitional phases in motor behaviour
In: BehaviourSearch for other papers by Hila Keren in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Search for other papers by Joel Mort in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
dDepartment of Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA
Search for other papers by Pascal Boyer in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Search for other papers by Omri Weiss in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Search for other papers by David Eilam in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Motor behaviours typically include acts that may seem irrelevant for the goal of the task. These unnecessary idiosyncratic acts are excessively manifested in certain activities, such as sports or compulsive rituals. Using the shared performance (commonness) of acts as a proxy for their relevance to the current task, we analysed motor behaviour in daily tasks, sport-related tasks, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) tasks. For each task, these motor behaviours comprised common acts that were performed by all the individuals, and idiosyncratic acts that were performed by only some individuals. In all three tasks there was a temporal section that included all the common acts (termed ‘body’). This body section was preceded by a sequence of idiosyncratic acts that we termed ‘head’, and was followed by another sequence of idiosyncratic acts that we termed ‘tail’. While both head and tail sections were relatively short in the daily tasks, the head was relatively long and the tail largely absent in sport-related tasks, which have a definite end and high stakes. In contrast, OCD behaviour had a relatively long tail. In light of these results, we suggest that the head is a preparatory phase and the tail a confirmatory phase. The head may be viewed as a warm-up phase for the pragmatic section of the task (‘body’), and the tail as a cool-down phase. Finally, we suggest that rituals may be viewed as a descendant of pragmatic activities, which differentially feature a greater terminal phase of idiosyncratic acts in OCD, and an extended initial phase of idiosyncratic acts in sport rituals.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 348 | 70 | 8 |
| Full Text Views | 67 | 2 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 41 | 3 | 0 |
