Factors in Recovery from Performance Decrement: Activation, Inhibition and Warm-up

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Abstract
It has been recently found that rotary pursuit tracking performance can be enhanced as a result of inducing muscular tension by requiring individuals to squeeze a dynamometer as an interpolated activity between tracking trials. The present experiment was designed to determine whether such enhancement would result if the tension inducing activity utilized the same muscular movements as those involved in the rotary pursuit task. In the main condition, Ss were required to overcome 3 in.-lb. of resistance in order to turn a disk at 60 rpm. This interpolated activity significantly enhanced reminiscence beyond that following rest alone. No enhancement occurred in a control condition when there was no resistance to overcome. Another condition in which muscular tension was induced by turning the disk in a direction opposite to that of the pursuit rotor target resulted in an enhancement of reminiscence. A final tension inducing condition in which the disk was turned with the non-tracking hand produced a bilateral enhancement effect. It was generally found that those individuals with the greatest amount of performance decrement tended to show the greatest enhancement. The results of this study were viewed as additional evidence of the influence of changes in activation level upon efficiency of performance.