B.N. Bezdenezhnykh - Dr. Sc. (Psychol.), Professor, Leading Researcher, Laboratory of Psychophysiology, Institute of Psychology RAS (Moscow). E-mail: bezbornik@mail.ru

It is known that: a) subjects (Ss) predict every next action while performing consecutive actions; b) every preceding action affects next action; c) consecutive actions overlap. The aim of this work was to settle the question of regularities of interaction of the neuronal systems providing consecutive actions when they overlap. At the overlap stage there are active systems supporting current action and planned actions. We estimated extent of domination of systems of the current and planned actions at a stage of their overlapping. Ss repeatedly and quickly printed one finger the sentence without admission between words. Such activity is presented by consecutive precision actions, each of which begins saccadic eye movement (SEM) on a key (letter) and comes to the end with its fast pressing. And, the SEM begins before pressing the previous letter, i.e. overlapping in time of two consecutive actions takes place - one action comes to the end and formation of the subsequent action is carried out. While printing Ss were presented with stop-signal in 20% of cases during overlapping. In the first task they had to stop printing if the stop-signal appeared after pressing of a vowel (consonant) letter and to continue to print if the stop-signal appeared after pressing of a consonant (vowel) letter.

 

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