ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates how different task constraints influence the occurrence of microslips. Fourteen female undergraduates participated in the experiment, receiving partial course credit. The participants were asked to engage in a coffee making task and a block building task. Coding of video clips was done independently by two coders other than the author. The inter-rater agreement of the occurrence of slips was 0.85, and any coding differences were settled by the author. Microslips were further analyzed in terms of transitions, pauses and touches. Because of the differences in frequencies between tasks, the following analyses of microslips were based on percentages, and statistics were carried out on the transformed variables. The result suggests that because the block task involves more freedom in choice of action, participants more frequently altered the target (block to reach or place to put), and less frequently resumed the same action.
