Running Head: LOAD EFFECT ON SEQUENTIAL SKILLS

Origami folding: Memory load effects on acquisition of sequential skills

Fang Zhao1, Robert Gaschler1, Anneli Kneschke1, Simon Radler1, Melanie Gausmann1,

Christina Duttine1, Hilde Haider2

Author’s Note

1. University of Hagen, Germany

2. University of Cologne, Germany

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Fang Zhao, Faculty of

Psychology, University of Hagen, Universitätsstrasse 33, D-58097 Hagen, Germany. Contact:

fang.zhao@fernuni-hagen.de

All authors declare to have no competing interest.

Origami folding: Memory load effects on acquisition of sequential skills

Abstract

Cognitive and motor memory loads can affect sequential skills. Differentiating the

execution and the acquisition of sequential skills, we studied the impact of cognitive or

motoric dual-task loads on performance in Origami folding and changes with practice.
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Participants (N = 53) folded five Origami figures for four times each, which were randomly

paired with five types of secondary tasks to cause either cognitive (verbal vs. visuospatial) or

motoric (isochronous vs. nonisochronous tapping) memory load or none (control condition).

Origami performance showed a typical learning curve from Repetition 1 to Repetition 4. We

observed a dissociation between variants of dual-task load influencing Origami folding

performance vs. the variants influencing learning (i.e. change in performance across the four

repetitions). In particular, the learning of Origami folding was only interfered by the memory

load of the cognitive visuospatial secondary task as well as by the isochronous tapping

secondary task. This might be due to the use of visuospatial sketchpad and absolute timing

mechanism during the acquisition of Origami folding. The performance of Origami folding

was moderated by the isochronous tapping secondary task.

Keywords: cognitive load, motoric load, performance, learning, dual tasking, finger

tapping
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Origami folding: Memory load effects on acquisition of sequential skills

1. Introduction

Many of our everyday-life skills are determined by a certain sequence (cf. Lashley,

1951). For instance, Origami paper folding consists of performing series of actions following

a certain sequence. If one step is wrong or ignored, it is very unlikely that the figure can be

folded correctly. Studies in movement science show that our motor and cognitive control in

sequential skills often interfere with each other in a trade-off manner (e.g., Loeffler et al.,

2018; Patel, 2018). For instance, attentional resources are allocated with prioritization to the

postural task to avoid falling in elderly people (Lindenberger et al., 2000). VanderVelde et al.

(2005) documented an impairment of motor control when participants concurrently solve a

cognitive memory load task.

Under dual-tasking selective memory loads can affect performance due to our limited

processing capacity in working memory (e.g., Holding, 1992; Holm et al., 2017; Sims &

Hegarty, 1997). Yet an impact of load on performance does not necessarily imply an impact

on learning. Past studies suggest that motor learning can work even better when there is

concurrent cognitive load.. Langhanns and Müller (2018) documented better performance

with paddleball task (fast rhythmic movement) under dual-tasking compared to single task.

Van Impe et al. (2011) observed better performance when participants drew circles under

dual-tasking compared to single task. Soylu and Newman (2016) reported the time variability

of finger tapping decreased under dual-tasking compared to single tasking. This phenomenon

may be due to the harmful cognitive monitoring for some motor control process. When the

motor process is acquired and automated, cognitive resources are not allocated to the

movement (rather to the cognitive secondary task). Cognitive secondary tasks can thus benefit

from the automated motor process of the sequential skills. In this study, we thus examined
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whether and which type of memory load interferes with the performance vs. learning of a

sequential skill.

As folding Origami can require cognitive as well as motor control (cf. Tenbrink &

Taylor, 2015), a secondary task is added so that cognitive or motor capacity can be loaded.

We asked participants to fold each figure four times and analyzed the change in performance

across the four repetitions in folding the same Origami in order to examine the memory load

effect on performance vs. acquisition of sequential skills. If a specific secondary task disrupts

Origami folding, then it will be assumed that folding and the secondary task use overlapping

resources. Potentially, resources required for improving Origami folding from one trial to the

next do not completely overlap with the resources required for executing the sequential skill.

This would show by differences in which secondary tasks have an impact of performance vs.

on changes in performance across repetitions.

1.1 Origami Folding Task

So far the effects of memory load on sequential skills have been tested by using tasks

like walking (Lindenberger et al., 2000), paddleball or pegboard task (Langhanns & Müller,

2018), or ankle movements (Johannsen et al., 2013). Our decision to combine an Origami

paper folding task with various memory load tasks was guided by three motives. First, despite

that Origami folding has been spread out through the world for a long time, many people are

novices (different from e.g. car driving) so that acquisition of a sequential skill can be studied.

The long history might also help to motivate novices to learn the skill. It is believed that paper

folding was invented after the invention of paper in 105 A.D. in China and was spread by

Buddhist monks through Korea to Japan in 6th century (Demaine & O’Rourke, 2007).

Nowadays most people have easy access to papers and most have experiences in folding

planes or cranes. Second, Origami folding consists of common features of sequential skills.

People execute hierarchical action plans, which decompose an overreaching goal into sub-

goals, to organized behaviors (cf. Botvinick, 2008). Third, unlike driving or playing piano,
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paper folding experiments require only papers and are ideal for research projects with tight

budgets.

In our study, participants were informed about the terminologies and meanings of

symbols before folding. Then they received step-by-step instructions. For instance, they saw

the folding state in Figure 1, which is a snapshot of a folding motion (indicated by arrows).

There are many creases, which are line segments on a piece of paper (cf. Demaine &

O’Rourke, 2007). They can be folded in two ways. A mountain fold displayed in solid lines

forms a protruding ridge. A valley fold shown by dash lines forms an indented trough. The

light grey side represents the front side of the paper and the dark grey side represents the back

side of the paper. Afterwards, participants received a flat paper and were to animate the

folding step into a folding motion. Origami folding thus requires to map spatial

transformations to sub-goals and executing continuous actions in exact sequence to reach the

folding goal.

Tenbrink and Taylor (2015) proposed four stages in Origami paper folding by analyzing

the verbal protocols during the folding task. The first stage is reading. At this stage,

participants read the instruction, such as an image showing “fold two corners under the inside

part of the wings”. Some people start directly with the second stage reformulating. They

interpret the meaning of the instruction in their own words. The third stage is

reconceptualizing by adding ideas about the folding step. During reconceptualization,

participants used many spatial concepts “in, on, to, up, middle”. They discussed the crease,

alignment and orientation of the objects. This highlights the mental operations necessary to

move from two-dimensional instruction to three-dimensional product. The last stage is the

evaluation of the product in comparison to the instruction.

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Figure 1. The 6th step of folding a penguin is to “fold two corners under the inside part of the

wings”.

1.2 Dual-Task Interference

Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) suggested that the human cognitive architecture includes a

working memory with limited capacity and an extensive long-term memory. Recent works

suggest analogous mechanisms of selection and updating in declarative and procedural

working memory (Oberauer et al., 2013). Capacity has been estimated to be four items (e.g.,

Adam et al., 2017) and has been discussed with respect to implications in learning-settings

(see a review: Schnotz & Kürschner, 2007). One influential model suggests that working

memory consists of a central executive, a phonological loop to manipulate the verbal

information, and a visuospatial sketchpad to store imagery (Baddeley, 1986, 1992). Origami

folding would make use of the visuospatial sketchpad as well as the phonological loop and the

central executive to transfer information between the two storages. A secondary task could

demand resources that are lacking for the information transformation processes necessary for

folding and necessary to assign credit to particular steps in the folding process in order to

learn to improve performance (cf. Fu & Anderson, 2008).

Sequential skills often involve tradeoff between cognitive and motor control (see a

review, Woollacott & Shumway-Cook, 2002). The Motor Simulation Theory (Jeannerod,
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2001; see a review, O’Shea & Moran, 2017) proposes that the human’s motor system is part

of a simulation network. It consists of motor imagery (mental representation of the action

without engaging the movement) as well as motor execution. The motor imagery rehearses

motor-related system off-line by simulating the action execution and finally shapes the motor

system into the intended actions. Motor imagery and action execution hence can share

common mental representations and mechanisms. Take Origami folding as an example,

participants used motor imagery to animate the static folding steps without performing any

movement. Then they executed the action by translating the motor imagery into folding

actions. A secondary motor task could request resources that are necessary to be assigned to

the motor imagery and action execution of Origami folding. Thus, secondary task load might

influence performance and learning. Furthermore, learning might ease the impact of a

secondary task: To the extent the sequential skill learned (i.e., information is stored as higher

order units called cognitive schemata, cf. Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995; Sweller & Chandler,

1994), people might need to rely less on instructions and transformation between verbal vs.

visual format or cognitive vs. motor system, leaving the secondary task the resources it

demands.

When we perform multiple tasks simultaneously, the execution of the tasks normally

slows down due to the dual-tasking interference. There are many hypotheses explaining this

issue (see a review: Wickens, 2002). The single channel Bottleneck hypothesis (Broadbent,

1958; Craik, 1948; Pashler, 1994; Welford, 1952) presumes that information processing has a

bottleneck or filter with limited capacity. We can thus perform two concurrent tasks less

effectively compared to performing one task at a time. The Attentional Resource theory

(Kahnemann, 1973) suggests that the limited capacity central processor can, to some extent,

be shared between tasks. The mental resources can be allocated to one task and the left-over

resources can be applied to the other task. However, the evidence of tradeoffs between the

primary and the secondary tasks leads to a new assumption: The Multiple Resource theory
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(McLeod, 1977; Treisman & Davies, 2012; Wickens et al., 1984). It assumes that two parallel

tasks only interfere with each other when using the same mental resources. For instance,

interference between two tasks is only shown when both tasks use the same modality, e.g.,

manual responses. Due to the evidence of verbal-pictorial dual-channel process (e.g.,

Baddeley, 1986) and the tradeoffs between cognitive and motor control (e.g., Woollacott &

Shumway-Cook, 2002), the Multiple Resource theory is used to explain how memory load

affects the acquisition of sequential skills.

1.3 Cognitive and Motor Control

According to the Baddeley-model, dual-task paradigms can lead to resource conflicts in

the phonological loop or in visuospatial sketchpad. By testing participants on a task paired

with either load for the visuospatial sketchpad or load for the phonological loop, researchers

can check which representation format their task of interest seems to be mostly drawing upon.

For instance, when asking participants to memorize chess configurations, impairment was

revealed for the visuospatial sketchpad only (Holding, 1992). Similarly, only interference with

visuospatial working memory load task was revealed when participants performed a mental

animation task and a visuospatial vs. verbal memory load task concurrently (cf. Shaver et al.,

1974; Sims & Hegarty, 1997; Zacks & Tversky, 2005). We thus used cognitive verbal and

cognitive visuospatial secondary tasks (S. Sternberg, 1969) to test which representation

format was mostly relevant for Origami folding and improvement in folding.

According to the Multiple Resource theory (cf. Wickens et al., 1984), dual-task

paradigms can lead to resource conflicts between cognitive and motor control. Finger tapping

of interval patterns is used in the experiment to examine the motor control under dual-tasking

(e.g., Bååth et al., 2016; Krampe et al., 2010). When perceive the interval patterns, people

attempt to generate an internal clock, which enables the accurate representation of temporal

structure (Povel, 1981). Whether the internal clock is successfully generated or not depends

on the structure of the rhythmic patterns: isochronous structure (interstimulus onset intervals,
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IOIs, of equal duration) or nonisochronous structure (IOIs of arbitrary durations) (Franĕk et

al., 1994). When the rhythmic patterns are isochronous, the clock can be evoked and the

temporal structure can be represented accurately. In contrast, when the clock is not evoked,

the temporal structure is not represented accurately and reproduction is based on the

assimilation and distinction principles (Povel & Essens, 1985; Repp et al., 2012; Semjen &

Ivry, 2001; Summers et al., 1986). The assimilation principle refers to the tendency to

equalize similar temporal intervals. For example, people tend to assimilate rhythmic patterns

with 4:5 ratio (e.g., 400 ms vs. 500 ms) toward 1:1 ratio. The distinction principle refers to the

tendency to distinguish different temporal intervals by categorizing them into long vs. short

intervals (Collier & Wright, 1995; Desain & Honing, 2003; S. Sternberg & Knoll, 1994;

Summers et al., 1989). For example, rhythmic patterns with 3:2 ratio (e.g., 900 ms vs. 600 ms)

tend to be reproduced with a long/short ratio of 2:1 by exaggerating the longer intervals to

duple multiple of the basic interval. Taken together, the absolute timing mechanism (i.e.,

exact temporal values) is prompted with isochronous structure. The relative timing

mechanism (i.e., relative temporal ratios) is evoked with nonisochronous structure. We

therefore speculated that tapping rhythmic patterns with isochronous vs. nonisochronous

patterns would, in different extent, overload the limited resources in motor modality, leading

to decrements in improvements of Origami folding.

1.4 Research Question

In this article we used the dual-task paradigm to dissociate the memory load effect on

execution vs. acquisition of sequential skills. To this end, we compared the course of the

Origami performance from repetition 1 to repetition 4 accompanying four variants of memory

load (cognitive verbal, cognitive visuospatial, motoric isochronous tapping, motoric

nonisochronous tapping) with single task (Origami folding) only.

2. Method
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In an experimental setting, speed and accuracy of responses were recorded to examine

the behavioral changes of the Origami folding task (primary task) and the secondary tasks.

Program and data are available online (Zhao, 2020, https://osf.io/p3tyf/).

2.1 Participant

61 participants were recruited for the experiment. Of these, data from 8 participants

were excluded because they did not complete the experiment. Data from 53 participants were

reported (Mage = 34.5 years, SD = 8.9, range = 18 to 58; 29 females, 21 males and 3 others).

The mean age of participants was higher than in many laboratory studies in cognitive

psychology as students at University of Hagen (state-run distance teaching university in

Germany) are older and more heterogeneous in age than students at other universities. All

participants had normal or corrected-to-normal vision acuity and hearing ability. Participants

gave their written informed consent before their participation. The experiment was part of 4

Bachelor of Science theses and participants took part voluntarily for no extra reward in the 2-

hour experiment. They folded in total 1,060 Origami figures.

2.2 Experimental material

Origami-Folding Task (Task 1). Each trial consisted of an Origami-folding task (Task

1) and a secondary task (see Table 1). For the Origami-folding task, we selected randomly 5

relatively easy-to-fold figures: chair, box, penguin, butterfly and frog (see Appendix). The

Origami chair contained 9 steps and all the other Origami figures contained 10 steps. We

designed the folding materials in black and white (800 × 800 pixel resolution) by using the

software Excel and PowerPoint from Microsoft Office. All the Origami materials contained

only the pictures to avoid the effect of text. The order of the Origami-folding task was

identical to each participant: chair, box, penguin, butterfly, and frog.

Secondary Task Variants (Task 2). Each participant performed four folding runs with

each Origami figure with the same variant of dual-task. Each participant was to work on all
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five Origami figures and receive all five variants of dual-task demands (with the pairing

counterbalanced across participants with a Latin square).

Cognitive verbal secondary task. The first type was an Origami-folding task combined

with a cognitive verbal secondary task (see Baddeley & Hitch, 1974; Sims & Hegarty, 1997;

Sternberg, 1969). On each trial, the participant received a list with three letters (e.g., R M D)

and should keep them in mind (see Condition 1 in Figure 2). Letter lists were generated

randomly from a letter pool with 16 uppercase consonants: B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P,

R, S, T, and W. No letter was repeated within a letter list. No vowels were used to minimize

the chances of creating a pronounceable string of letters. The letters were in 100 pixel. Then

an instruction of an Origami-folding step appeared. After the participant folded the paper, she

or he pressed the Enter key. For verification, the participant was shown a second list with

three letters. For half of the trials, the letter list was identical to the initial list (true trial). For

the other half of the trials, one randomly chosen letter was switched with another letter in the

letter pool (false trial). The order of the letters was thus irrelevant. For instance, when the

letter list was “R M D” and verification task was “R M D”, the answer for the verbal

secondary task was “true”. If the letter list was “R M D” and the verification task was “R M

S”, the trial was false. The participant decided whether the second letter list was different (N

key) or identical to the initial letter list (C key).

Cognitive visuospatial secondary task. The second type was to fold the Origami with a

visuospatial interference task (see Kruley et al., 1994; Sims & Hegarty, 1997). On each trial,

the participant was first shown a 4 × 4 grid containing three black squares for 3 seconds (see

Condition 2 in Figure 2). Each square was 100 pixel and the grid was 400 pixel in width and

in height. The task was to memorize the pattern of squares for later verification. The positions

of the squares were generated randomly. The only constraint was that the three squares could

not fall in a straight line. In-between new memory items, the participant received an

instruction to fold an Origami step. After the folding step was completed, she or he pressed
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Enter. For verification, participants were presented with a second grid containing three

squares. Trials were constructed so that half of them were true (first matrix identical to second

matrix) and half were false. For the false trials, one randomly chosen square was moved by

one space on the grid. The direction of movement of this square was generated randomly and

was constrained in a way that a straight line was not formed. As shown in Figure 2, the grid

with three black squares was identical before and after the folding task, the visuospatial

secondary task was true. The participant pressed the C key for true trials and the N key for

false trials.

Motoric isochronous tapping secondary task. The third type was to complete an

Origami-folding task with a motoric isochronous tapping secondary task. That is, participants

were asked to repeatedly tap IOIs (interstimulus onset intervals) of equal duration. On each

trial, the participant first listened to an isochronous pacing beat with four tones (each in 440

Hz with a pitch of A4 with a duration of 100 ms). The IOI was generated randomly one out of

three intervals of one, duple and triple multiples of the basic interval onset 300 ms (i.e., 300

ms vs. 600 ms vs. 900 ms), similar to metrically structured patterns in other studies (Brandon

et al., 2012; Povel & Essens, 1985). Unlike the original Povel and Essens (1985) patterns, we

used only sub-second range, as Holm et al. (2017) found the interference of load on tapping in

the sub-second range rather than supra-second range. One example of the isochronous beat

was 300 ms vs. 300 ms vs. 300 ms. The beat was played by the laptop’s built-in speaker. After

the folding task, the participant tapped the rhythm by pressing the space bar. They could tap

with fingers of either hand or both hands, as no specific instruction was displayed. Only if

they tapped the space bar four times, the next trial appeared. The program recorded the

respective inter-response intervals (IRIs) of the taps. We considered the trial correct, when the

variability of IRIs were less than 20% of the IOIs regarding absolute timing or relative timing

(cf. Thomaschke, Kunchulia, Dreisbach, 2014).

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Motoric nonisochronous tapping secondary task. The fourth type was to pair the

Origami-folding task with a motoric nonisochronous tapping secondary task. That is,

participants tapped the IOIs of arbitrary durations. On each trial, the participant first listened

to a pacing beat with four tones (440 Hz with a duration of 100 ms) in unequal intervals. The

IOIs were generated randomly from three time intervals (300 ms vs. 600 ms vs. 900 ms). One

constraint was that one of the three time intervals could not be chosen for three times to avoid

producing the isochronous beat. One possible nonisochronous rhythm was 600 ms vs. 300 ms

vs. 300 ms. After the folding task, the participant tapped the beats by pressing the space bar.

Only if they tapped the space bar for four times, the next trial appeared. The program recorded

the IRIs of the taps. The trial was classified as correct, when the variability of IRIs were less

than 20% of the IOIs regarding absolute timing or relative timing.

None. The last variant was to fold each origami figures for four times. No secondary

task was shown.

Table 1

The sequence of the Origami-folding task (Task 1) was the same for each participant (i.e.,

chair – box – penguin – butterfly – frog). Sequences of the secondary task variants to the

Origami figures were counterbalanced according to a Latin square, shown in the chart

below. Each row represents the combinations of the two tasks for one participant. Each cell is

presented (immediate repeats) 4 times per participant.

Pengui Butterfl
Chair Box Frog
n y
1 CV CS MI MN None
2 CS MI MN None CV
3 MI MN None CV CS
4 MN None CV CS MI
5 None CV CS MI MN
CV: Cognitive Verbal; CS: Cognitive Visuospatial
MI: Motoric Isochronous Tapping; MN: Motoric Nonisochronous Tapping
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Tones are
played

♩. ♩ ♪ ♩
Tones are
played

♩♩♩♩ Tap with

space bar

♩. ♩ ♪ ♩
Tap with
space bar

♩♩♩♩

Figure 2. Each participant folded five Origami figures successively: Chair, box, penguin,

butterfly and frog for four times (4×). The secondary tasks were counterbalanced across

particicpants. For this participant, she or he folds the chair figure from folding step 1 to

folding step 9 in four repetitions. On each trial, she or he receives a list of three letters for 3

seconds and then an instruction of a folding step. After completing the folding step, she or he

verifies whether the second letter list is identical (press C key) or different (press N key) to the

initial list. In the consecutive blocks, the participant folded the box figure (with the cognitive

visuospatial secondary task), the penguine figure (with motoric isochronous tapping

secondary task), the butterfly figure (with motoric nonisochronous tapping secondary task)

and the frog figure (with none secondary task).

2.3 Apparatus

The experiment was implemented in Lazarus (Lazarus Team, 1993). The experiment

was displayed on a Lenovo Thinkpad T530 laptop with a 12.5-inch display. The keys required

by the participants to enter secondary task responses (C, or N, or space bar) and folding step
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ends (Enter) were highlighted with colored self-adhesive dots. Additionally, 24 sheets of 210

× 210 mm white papers were available for each participant for the Origami-folding task.

2.4 Procedure

The experiment was conducted individually in a quiet environment. At the beginning,

participants were informed about the procedures of the study and they could quit the

experiment at any time. They signed the form of consent. Data were acquired anonymously,

by using an ID not connected to personal data. Except from timing and errors data in the

Origami and the secondary tasks we registered age and gender as demographic information.

Before folding, the folding instruction handouts were passed to the participant (see Appendix

A). The instructions described the particularly difficult folding steps with textual

explanations, which were supposed to help participants to better understand the instructions.

To enable time measurement for the folding steps, the participant were only allowed to

perform folding steps if indicated by the program. The participants were informed to perform

the tasks as accurately and as quickly as possible.

After these general instructions Origami folding was only interrupted for introducing the

secondary tasks. Before each folding step, the secondary task was presented. The cognitive

verbal and cognitive visuospatial secondary tasks were displayed for 3 seconds. The motoric

isochronous tapping and nonisochronous tapping secondary tasks were played with three IOIs

(300 ms vs. 600 ms vs. 900 ms). The display changed automatically to the folding step

instructions after presentation of the secondary task. Once the participants completed the

folding step, they pressed the Enter key to proceed. This was also the case if the participants

decided that they were unable to complete the step successfully. The experimenter registered

the success of each folding step by observation. After the folding step, the secondary task

response was registered. No feedback was provided about speed and accuracy.
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If an Origami-folding run contained wrongly executed steps or was entirely

unsuccessful, a hint was given by the experimenters on how to avoid the errors in the

following repetition before it started. These specific instructions that went beyond a pure

pictorial and textual representation enabled the participants to master the steps at which they

failed before (see Furuyama, 2000). The entire experiment contained five blocks (each block

contained an Origami figure) of four folding runs each. It is important to note that the

secondary task and the Origami figures were unchanged within a block. After self-paced

folding of each Origami figure, participant could choose to have a break. Each participant was

to fold five different Origami figures four times each, totalling 20 figures. The overall

experiment took around 2 hours per participant.

2.5 Measurements

We recorded the RTs and error rate per folding step for different secondary tasks from

individual subjects (i.e., within-subject estimates). RTs per folding step were the onsets

between the start of displaying the folding step and the end of pressing the Enter key. Error

rates of folding step were noted by the experimenter, if each folding step was performed

correctly by the participant. RTs of the cognitive secondary tasks were the onsets between the

start of the verification task and the end of the response key (either C or N). Responses of the

cognitive secondary tasks and IRIs of the taps were registered by the program. The error rates

were calculated by using a statistical software R.

3. Results: Performance in Origami-Folding Task

We excluded the last steps in all the Origami figures due to a programming error. We

excluded trials with RTs of Origami folding task longer than 100 sec (2.1% of all trials). The

averaged correlation between RT and error rates per Origami figure per person (i.e., the

correlation compared 5 RTs and 5 error rates per participant. Then the average correlation of
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all participants was calculated.) was small and positive (r = .26), which rules out a speed-

accuracy tradeoff account. Given that folding an Origami consisted of different steps, we also

explored the variability of time demands of different steps of the different Origami. The

fluctuation in Figure B2 shows the complexity differences between individual folding steps.

Taking the most difficult Penguin figure as an example (see Appendix B2), the simpler

folding step 2 (“Turn the paper over and fold the lower corner to the middle”) required only

4.49 seconds (SD = 3.33 sec) on average, and step 6 (“Fold the corners under the inside part

of the wings”) took 42.31 seconds (SD = 28.03 sec). This high variability suggests to proceed

with analyzing the effect of dual task variant on performance and change in performance on

the level of entire Origami figures rather than at the level of steps.

Figure 3. RTs and error rates of Origami-folding task (Task 1) when paired with different

variants of the secondary tasks (i.e., cognitive verbal, cognitive visuospatial, motoric

isochronous tapping, motoric nonisochronous tapping, and none).

Table 2

The averaged RTs and error rates of Origami-folding task (T1) with all secondary task

variants.

Rep1 Rep2 Rep3 Rep4 Average DiffRep1-

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Rep4
RTs in sec Mean (SD)
26.24 18.86 12.8
Verbal (10.36)
19.08 (7.47) 15.96 (6.57) 14.16 (5.79)
(8.97) (8.58)
24.89 19.81 9.04
Visuospatial (10.39)
20.82 (9.74) 17.66 (8.60) 15.85 (7.41)
(9.67) (8.21)
27.79 22.58 20.04 17.75 22.04 10.40
Isochronous
(8.99) (7.85) (9.07) (7.88) (9.20) (6.58)
25.63 19.25 17.22 15.25 19.34 10.37
Nonisochronous
(10.28) (9.33) (10.06) (8.49) (10.27) (9.22)
26.37 18.49 13.42
None (10.81)
19.09 (8.06) 15.56 (7.67) 12.95 (6.18)
(9.71) (8.68)
Error rates in %
14.2% 3.9% 1.7% 5.2% 13.2%
Verbal (19.7%) (8.3%) (6.7%)
1.0 (3.9%)
(12.5%) (20.0%)
21.0% 13.8% 6.9% 7.2% 12.2% 13.9%
Visuospatial (24.2%) (20.5%) (13.2%) (15.0%) (19.5%) (19.7%)
17.2% 11.3% 8.4% 6.1% 10.8% 11.1%
Isochronous
(23.5%) (17.4%) (13.5%) (11.3%) (17.4%) (17.9%)
16.5% 13.1% 10.7% 5.9% 11.5% 10.5%
Nonisochronous
(20.6%) (17.5%) (19.6%) (11.6%) (18.0%) (16.9%)
17.8% 5.6% 2.1% 1.5% 6.7% 16.3%
None (24.3%) (12.9%) (6.9%) (9.3%) (16.2%) (26.6%)

In the main analysis, we examined the performance of Origami-folding task by pairing

the baseline (no dual task load) with each dual-task condition. The performance of the

secondary tasks is reported in the Appendix. We expected a dissociation between variants of

dual-task load affecting Origami folding performance vs. the variants influcing the changes

across the four repetitions.

Cognitive Visuospatial Secondary Task. The ANOVA on RTs with 2 (task type:

cognitive visuospatial vs. none) × 4 (repetition number) revealed an interaction of task type ×

repetition number, F(1.88, 97.86) = 3.99, p = .02, ηp² = .07 (here and elsewhere we applied

Greenhouse Geisser-correction when appropriate), indicating that the gain in performance

across the four repetitions was larger for single-tasking (RTs: ΔM = 13.42 sec; ΔSD = 8.68

sec) than for visuospatial dual-tasking (ΔM = 9.04 sec; ΔSD = 8.21 sec) as shown in Figure 3.

The main effect of repetition number revealed the practice effect, F(1.93, 100.34) = 104.71, p

< .001, ηp² = .67. There was no main effect of task type, F(1, 52) = 1.33, p = .25, ηp² = .03.
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The separate ANOVA on error rate showed no interaction of task type × repetition

number, F(2.42, 125.89) = 0.70, p = .53, ηp² = .01. However, a main effect of task type, F(1,

52) = 8.14, p = .006, ηp² = .14, suggested participants made more errors when folding Origami

with the cognitive visuospatial secondary task than folding Origami alone. The main effect of

repetition number again showed the strong training effect, F(1.90, 98.99) = 28.39, p < .001,

ηp² = .35. It suggested that there were decrements in acquisition of Origami folding when

paired with the cognitive visuospatial secondary task, as more time or resource was required

for the visuospatial secondary task.

Cognitive Verbal Secondary Task. We analyzed RTs in the Origami-folding task in a

2 (task type: cognitive verbal vs. none) × 4 (repetition number) repeated-measures ANOVA.

We found neither a main effect of task type nor an interaction effect of task type × repetition

number, Fs < 1. Only a main effect of repetition number was revealed, F(1.61, 83.70) =

118.33, p < .001, ηp² = .70. Similarly, the ANOVA on error rate did not show any effect of

task type and any interaction of task type × repetition number, Fs < 1.38, but only a main

effect of repetition number, F(1.50, 77.83) = 23.44, p < .001, ηp² = .31. The results suggested

no significant difference in Origami folding with a concurrent verbal secondary task

compared to without secondary task.

Motoric Isochronous Tapping Secondary Task. We analyzed RTs in the Origami-

folding task in a 2 (task type: motoric isochronous tapping vs. none) × 4 (repetition number)

ANOVA. We found an interaction effect of task type × repetition number, F(1.90, 98.97) =

67.23, p < .001, ηp² = .56, suggesting RTs were reduced more in the single task condition

across the four repetitions than in the motoric isochronous tapping dual-tasking condition

(RTs: ΔM = 10.37 sec; ΔSD = 9.26 sec). The main effects of task type [F(1, 52) = 328.76, p

< .001, ηp² = .86] and repetition number [F(1.91, 99.33) = 65.37, p < .001, ηp² = .56] indicated

the decremented effect of motoric isochronous tapping memory load on Origami folding.
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The ANOVA on error rates for the Origami-folding task revealed no interaction of

secondary task type × repetition number, F(2.36, 122.94) = 2.69, p = .06, ηp² = .05, but main

effects of secondary task type, F(1, 52) = 4.60, p = .04, ηp² = .08, and repetition number,

F(1.71, 89.10) = 20.76, p < .001, ηp² = .29. It suggested the training effect and effect of

motoric isochronous memory load on how to fold Origamis.

Motoric Nonisochronous Tapping Secondary Task. A separate ANOVA on RTs with

2 (task type: motoric nonisochronous tapping vs. none) × 4 (repetition number) ANOVA

revealed only a main effect of repetition number, F(2.06, 107.19) = 103.69, p < .001, ηp²

= .67. No other effect was found, task type and task type × repetition number, Fs < 1.76. [The

estimated Bayes factor (alternative/null) suggested that the data were .056:1 in favor of the

null hypothesis, or rather, 17.84 times more likely to occur under the model excluding an

effect for task type and repetition number, rather than the model with it.] The ANOVA on

error rate showed the main effects of task type [F(1, 52) = 6.50, p = .01, ηp² = .11] and

repetition number [F(2.22, 115.24) = 21.53, p < .001, ηp² = .29] as well as the interaction

effect [F(1.98, 103.03) = 3.21, p = .05, ηp² = .06], indicating that participants made more

errors when performing and learning Origami folding with concurrent isochronous tapping

secondary task.

4. Discussion

The main purpose of this study was to dissociate the execution and acquisition of

sequential skills. We reasoned that a genuine proof would be no general effect of all types of

memory load on the Origami folding performance vs. changes in four runs. The experiment

reported here concerned therefore either the main effect of secondary task type (indicating

performance) or interaction of task type and repetition number (indicating acquisition).

Based on Baddeley (1986), dual-task paradigm was used to test whether the execution

vs. acquisition of Origami folding shared resources in the phonological loop or in visuospatial
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LOAD EFFECT ON SEQUENTIAL SKILLS
sketchpad. An interaction of task type and repetition number (RTs) was revealed when

participants performed Origami folding with cognitive visuospatial secondary task. It suggests

a decremental effect in visuospatial sketchpad on acqusition rather than on execution of

Origami folding when paired with visuospatial secondary task. However, the effect is

relatively small and there was a main effect of task type reading error rates. One potential

explaination is that the cognitive process of Origami folding involves visuospatial sketchpad.

According to the Motor Simulation Theory (Jeannerod, 2001), while folding the human’s

motor imagery starts to simulate how to convert the two-dimensional description to a three-

dimensional object. During this process, many spatial concepts are involved, such as

mountain folding, front side of the paper, creases, motion arrows (Demaine & O’Rourke,

2007). The visuospatial resources in the visuospatial sketchpad are, to some extent, needed for

this process (cf. Shaver et al., 1974; Sims & Hegarty, 1997; Zacks & Tversky, 2005). In

contrast, cognitive verbal secondary task showed neither a main effect of task type nor an

interaction of task type and repetition number. Likely, the phonological loop did not affect the

execution vs. acquisition of Origami folding as only limited verbal resources are required.

Alternatively, it is possible that we used picture-only instruction in the experiment. Although

the pictorial information can be transformed into verbal information by inference-making (cf.

Mayer, 2009; Schnotz & Bannert, 2003), verbal process is still less invovled in Origami

folding.

Based on the Multiple Resource Theory (cf. Wickens et al., 1984), dual-task paradigm

examined the the resource conflicts of cognitive vs. motor control in Origami folding and in

tapping tasks. The analyses of RTs showed a main effect of task type and an interaction effect

of task type and repetition number in Origami folding with isochronous tapping secondary

task. In contrast, neither a main effect nor an interaction was revealed when Origami folding

was paired with nonisochronous tapping secondary tasks. It suggested only the impairment of

executing as well as learning Origami folding, while holding the isochronous rhythmic
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LOAD EFFECT ON SEQUENTIAL SKILLS
patterns in mind. According to Povel (1981), participants attempt to perceive and estimate the

rhythmic tempi in internal clock with isochronous temporal patterns. Yet when reproduce

nonsochronous rhythmic patterns, the internal clock cannot be generated and people tend to

resort to the organizing principles of assimilation and distinction (e.g., Collier & Wright,

1995: Fraisse, 1956; Povel & Essens, 1985; Repp, London, & Keller, 2005). They assimilate

similar temporal patterns toward 1:1 ratio. When the temporal patterns distinguish like 2:3,

they tend to categorize the patterns into long/short ratios. For instance, rhythmic patterns with

3:2:2 ratio (e.g., 900 ms vs. 600 ms vs. 600 ms) tend to be reproduced with a long/short/short

ratio of 2:1:1. In short, absolute timing mechanism is activated when participants tapped

isochronous patterns. The relative timing mechanism is activated when participants tapped

nonisochronous patterns. The analyses on error rates of the tapping secondary task in

Appendix supported the argument that participants employed different timing strategies in

tapping tasks. When considering absolute timing (self-produced IRIs in variance of 20% of

the absolute IOIs) as correct trials, participants made much more errors in the motoric

nonisochronous tapping secondary task compared to the motoric nonisochronous tapping

secondary task (90.9% vs. 61.6%). In contrast, when considering relative timing (self-

produced IRIs in variance of 20% of the relative IOI ratios), error rates did not show any

difference in motoric isochronous vs. nonisochronous tapping secondary task (64.3% vs.

54.3%). Isochronous rhythmic patterns can be perceived, memorized and reproduced via

absolute timing mechanism, whereas nonisochronous rhythmic patterns via relative timing

mechanism. It might be the case that the absolute timing mechanism in the internal clock is

shared by executing vs. learning of Origami folding as well as the isochronous tapping tasks.

When performing Origami folding with isochronous tapping, the absolute timing mechanism

is overload, leading to impairments in execution and acquisition of Origami folding.

Taken together, this study did not show a general effect of all types of memory load but

rather for specific conditions on execution vs. acquisition of Origami folding. Interestingly,
 23
LOAD EFFECT ON SEQUENTIAL SKILLS
while concurrently performing visuospatial secondary task, there were detrimental effects of

learning rather than performing Origami folding. In line with the previous studies (Johannsen

et al., 2013; Langhanns & Müller, 2018; Van Impe et al., 2011), selective memory loads does

not necessarily affect execution vs. acquisition of sequential skills to the same extent. It is

concevable that allocating the cognitive resources to the secondary tasks can refrain some

motor control process in Origami folding from the harmful cognitive monitoring. The

execution of sequential skills is hence influenced. Learning requires the storage of

information as cognitive schemata (Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995). Under dual-tasking the

transformation from information to schemata might share resources in limited processing

capacity.

Furthermore, the study suggests that Origami folding can be a potential task to measure

sequence learning. First, it shares common characters of sequential skills, which cosists of

series of actions following certain sequences. Participants receive step-by-step instructions

and they should read, reformulate, reconceptualize and evaluate while folding (cf. Tenbrink &

Taylor, 2015). For instance, the longest folding time was Penguin Step 6 (see Figure 1) among

all folding steps (see Figure B2 in Appendix). The instruction for this step was to “fold the

corners under the inside part of the wings”. Participants should fold the corners first inside

and then put them under the wings. It involved motor imagery to off-line simulate the action

and execute the action. Origami folding is thus much more challenging compared to other lab

tasks on sequence learning (e.g., Koch, 2007; Röttger et al., 2019; Schumacher & Schwarb,

2009; Zhao et al., 2019). Second, although many people have experience in folding cranes or

planes, we still observed substantial improvements of Origami folding between Repetition 1

and 4 (see Figure 3). It suggests that Origami folding can be used to measure the acquisition

of sequential skills.

There are several limitations of the study. The folding difficulty for each step within

each Origami figure was with high variability, leading to various folding time.The experiment
 24
LOAD EFFECT ON SEQUENTIAL SKILLS
was 2-hour long and the increased fatigue might influence the performance vs. acquisition of

Origami folding. Moreover, prior knowledge and spatial ability play important roles in

performing and learning Origami folding. In the study, participants were instructed with

pictures of folding steps without textual deescriptions. We observed that some participants

with prior knowledge on Origami folding understood the picture-only instructures without

problem. Some participants without prior knowledge failed to understand the folding steps

and behaved aggressively after the experiment. A study on comics reading (Zhao & Mahrt,

2018) documented that inexperienced comic readers had difficulty in reading picture-only

comics compared to text-picture comics. Further research should be conducted to explore the

influence of prior knowledge on Origami folding and the influence of text-picture

instructions.

In conclusion, the study examined the dissociation between dual-task loads affecting

Origami folding performance vs. learning. We paired Origami folding (primary task) with

variants of dual-task load (cognitive verbal vs. visuospatial vs. motoric isochronous vs.

nonisochronous tapping vs. none) in four runs. The analyses of RTs showed a main effect of

task type in Origami folding with isochronous tapping secondary tasks. There were significant

interactions of task type and repetition number in Origami folding when paired with cognitive

visuospatial and isochronous secondary tasks. The results suggested that performance of

Origami folding was interfered by isochronous tapping secondary task. The acquisition of

Origami folding was moderated by visuospatial and isochronous tapping dual-task

interferences. The findings confirmed a dissociation between variants of dual-task load

influencing Origami folding performance vs. the variants influencing learning (i.e., gains

across the four repetitions).

Acknowledgement

We thank Msc. Robert Szwarc for the support in programming the software.
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