title: Inducing closing-in phenomenon in healthy young adults: the effect of dual task and stimulus complexity on drawing performance.
abstract: Closing-in (CI) is the tendency to act very close to the model in tasks such as drawing, 3D construction, gesture imitation, or writing. Closing-in is observed in degenerative and focal brain diseases, but also in normally developing children. In the present paper, three experiments were conducted to evaluate whether CI can be triggered during a copying task in normal young adults by increasing stimulus complexity and attentional load. Participants were required to copy complex lines in one of three conditions: without interfering activities (baseline), during counting, or during execution of a 2-back short-term memory task. In Experiment 1, participants were required to reproduce horizontally aligned stimuli, starting from a dot placed below each stimulus and proceeding from left to right; in Experiment 2, stimuli were again horizontally aligned, but the starting dot was placed above each stimulus, and writing proceeded from right to left; in Experiment 3, stimuli were aligned vertically and copying proceeded in upward direction. Results from all experiments showed that when normal young adults are engaged in an attentional-demanding concurrent activity, they tend to approach to the model, whereas the effect of stimulus complexity disappeared with unusual writing direction (Experiments 2 and 3). These findings demonstrate that even in normal young adults, a reduction in available attentional resources can release an attraction toward the model.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Second University of Naples, Viale Ellittico 31, 81100, Caserta, Italy.
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Sagliano
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: D'Olimpio
authors.forename: Massimiliano
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Conson
authors.forename: Angela
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cappuccio
authors.forename: Dario
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Grossi
authors.forename: Luigi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Trojano
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005868:Gestures; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult