Can you QWOP and chew gum at the same time?

 

One of the information processing tasks that our brains take care of for us automatically every day is how to walk correctly.  It turns out that this is an enormously complicated task, requiring visual, touch, and proprioceptive information to be recieved, analyzed, and reacted to on very short timescales, all of which happens automatically after about the first year of life.

Go big guy!

Furthermore, this information is not accessible to the conscious mind.  I can walk, but I don't actually know how I do it.  I could think really hard about what's going on while I'm walking around, and maybe figure it out, but this would be a hard task.  This fact is immediately apparent if you have the misfortune to be playing QWOP.


QWOP is a flash game in which you simply make your guy run 100 meters, by controlling the movements of his calves and thighs individually.  Unfortunately this is nearly impossible, for two reasons.  The first is an HCI problem: it's not obvious what "THIGHS" means as a control; does it cause flexion?  Extension?  Raising or lowering?  This is not at all obvious.  The much worse problem, though, is that you have to know exactly what your guy's legs are supposed to be doing at every point in the run cycle.  The conscious mind is definitely not equipped to handle even this relatively small amount of information processing, to say nothing of how much worse this game would be if you were in charge of your guy's feet, ankles, and so on.


However, some persevering pioneers have actually won at QWOP.  How can this be?  My guess is that, by trial and error, they have figured out the exact rhythm and sequence of keystrokes needed to get their guy from one step to the next, and have practiced it enough that they can do it automatically, gradually moving control from their conscious mind to the automatic part.  Presumably they can actually QWOP and chew gum.