A fish activity-monitoring device using a low-power infrared photobeam

An activity-monitor system for fish or other aquatic animals has been developed that uses a single low-level infrared (IRED) photobeam. The IRED source emits with a peak wavelength of 960 nm and requires only 70-mW average power input for an operating range of greater than 50 cm in sea water. This represents an order of magnitude reduction in power and more than a doubling of range over other reported designs. The cost for a single-beam channel is approximately $30.     

Evidence for an outflow theory of skill.

We argue that central monitoring of efferent signals (CME) is a necessary and perhaps sufficient condition for the most accurate reproduction of a linear movement. In a movement duplication task where the subject sets or is given a criterion movement which he then attempts to reproduce, we argue that voluntary criterion and reproduction movements may be based upon some ‘pre-set’ instruction whereas passive movement duplication must be based upon proprioceptive information. We show that subjects can perform a visual signal detection task during the voluntary criterion movement which does not affect accuracy of reproduction. The same task carried out during the passive criterion movement does affect reproduction. These findings suggest that pick-up of proprioceptive information is not involved in voluntary movement.     

Role of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee in Monitoring Research

During the 1980s, federal regulations transferred significant portions of the responsibility for monitoring the care and use of research animals from animal care programs to Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUCs). After a brief review of the history of the regulation of the use of animals in research preceding and during the 4 decades following World War 11, this article raises 4 problems associated with the role IACUCs currently play in monitoring the use of animals in research: (a) lack of expertise, (b) diverted resources, (c) conflict of interest, and (d) restrictions of academic freedom. It is concluded that the care and treatment of animals used in research would be served better and organized more rationally if the day-to-day responsibilities for approving projects and caring for animals were separated more clearly from broader, oversight functions, with the former being assigned to animal care programs and the latter to IACUCs.     

Role of the institutional animal care and use committee in monitoring research

During the 1980s, federal regulations transferred significant portions of the responsibility for monitoring the care and use of research animals from animal care programs to Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUCs). After a brief review of the history of the regulation of the use of animals in research preceding and during the 4 decades following World War II, this article raises 4 problems associated with the role IACUCs currently play in monitoring the use of animals in research: (a) lack of expertise, (b) diverted resources, (c) conflict of interest, and (d) restrictions of academic freedom. It is concluded that the care and treatment of animals used in research would be served better and organized more rationally if the day-to-day responsibilities for approving projects and caring for animals were separated more clearly from broader, oversight functions, with the former being assigned to animal care programs and the latter to IACUCs.     

Bernstein's theory of movement behavior: historical development and contemporary relevance

In present-day movement science, N. A. Bernstein's formulation of the problems of motor control is often taken as the starting point. The reliance on Bernstein has not brought agreement among his followers, however. In this article, the authors pose the following question: Does the disagreement arise from the structure of his work itself or from incomplete exploitation of his thinking? By using, inter alia, Bernstein's 24 English and German articles, the authors present an analysis of the development of Bernstein's theory of movement behavior, against the backdrop of the scientific progress in the Soviet Union in Bernstein's time and the clashes between Soviet politics and science. Bernstein addressed in his early articles the measurement and biomechanical analysis of movements. His experimental data soon indicated the need for a new understanding of the organization of movements, which he formulated in terms of coordination. Because of political problems, his work was interrupted; but after being "rehabilitated" and again allowed to work, Bernstein aimed to explain how animals find and optimize the solutions to motor problems. The structure of the theory that ensued was comprehensive exactly by virtue of his repeatedly shifting focus between the different aspects of the organization of movement: More important than the answers he gave were the questions he asked. Moreover, the way he approached those questions may help scientists solve pressing problems in present-day movement science.     

Overdosing on Organization Development: Toward criticalness in pastoral administration

The Organization Development movement is a positive and potentially fruitful influence that is being felt in the area of church administration. However, there may be problems involved in transferring the techniques of the movement directly and uncritically into congregational administration. Alluding to research which suggests that the matrix of congregational administration may be radically different from the matrix in which Organization Development was designed, the author pleads for criticalness in the appropriation of Organization Development techniques by pastors. He further suggests that pastoral administrative behavior in service to goals and values that are shared by both the Organization Development movement and the clergy may at times resemble behavior in service to exactly the opposite values.     

The concurrent use of three implicit measures (eye movements,pupillometry, and event-related potentials) to assess receptive vocabulary knowledge in normal adults

Recent years have seen the advent and proliferation of the use of implicit techniques to study learning and cognition. One such application is the use of event-related potentials (ERPs) to assess receptive vocabulary knowledge. Other implicit assessment techniques that may be well-suited to other testing situations or to use with varied participant groups have not been used as widely to study receptive vocabulary knowledge. We sought to develop additional implicit techniques to study receptive vocabulary knowledge that could augment the knowledge gained from the use of the ERP technique. Specifically, we used a simple forced-choice paradigm to assess receptive vocabulary knowledge in normal adult participants using eye movement monitoring (EM) and pupillometry. In the same group of participants, we also used an N400 semantic incongruity ERP paradigm to assess their knowledge of two groups of words: those expected to be known to the participants (high-frequency, familiar words) and those expected to be unknown (low-frequency, unfamiliar words). All three measures showed reliable differences between the known and unknown words. EM and pupillometry thus may provide insight into receptive vocabulary knowledge similar to that from ERPs. The development of additional implicit assessment techniques may increase the feasibility of receptive vocabulary testing across a wider range of participant groups and testing situations, and may make the conduct of such testing more accessible to a wider range of researchers, clinicians, and educators.     

Infant clinical assessment procedure: Its applications for diagnosis and treatment in the second and third year

This article reports on some clinical applications in the 9 to 30 month age range of a new structured paradigm. The Infant Clinical Assessment Procedure (ICAP) is not a test, but an assessment technique. It is particularly aimed at the evaluation and ongoing monitoring of problems in the emotional development of infants. Its eight episodes represent a wide array of effective, social, and cognitive stimuli. The primary focus of these episodes is on the infant, with the exception of the mother-infant task that specifically gauges the mother-infant ralationship. It is suggested through case vignettes that the ICAP may be useful for the documentation of the efficacy of treatment.     

A simple technique for correlating film and EMG in locomotion studies

Two recurring problems hampering investigations of muscular activity patterns during locomotion are electrical “noise” and movement artifact in the electromyographic (EMG) signal and proper synchronization of behavioral events to the EMG. A relatively simple technique for achieving these ends is presented. Vigorous locomotor movements of unrestrained animals are recorded on 16-mm film and synchronized with one or more EMGs from selected muscles with little electrical noise or movement artifact interference. The system employs telemetry which is compared to hardwire techniques.     

The timing of shifts of head postures during conservation

The timing of shifts of head postures in relation to speech during conservation was investigated by continuously monitoring, with a polarised light goniometer, the head movement of four subjects engaged in conservation.Postural shifts (PSs), defined as wide, linear movements, were found to occur primarily towards the initiation of speech, be it between speaking turns, or between syntactic boundaries inside speaking turns. This suggested that PSs are involved in regulating turn taking and marking syntactic boundaries inside speaking turns.Also, PSs usually started prior to and continued till after speech onset. This suggested a possible involvement in speech production, probably in helping to regulate the complex motor processes of beginning to speak.It is suggested that interactive, linguistic and speech productive functions may combine together to create a movement pattern by mutually constraining head movement.     

The Schematic Representation of Effector Function Underlying Perceptual-Motor Skill

Conceptual and methodological problems related to Schmidt’s (1975) motor schema theory are discussed. In particular, the motor schema is interpreted as representing the dynamics of the system being controlled, which may or may not be associated with a referent movement pattern. Furthermore, it is suggested that prior familiarity with a control system’s dynamics is a critical but uncontrolled factor in tests of the theory, and largely accounts for their equivocal findings. These ideas are examined by two experiments in which subjects had to bimanually control the movement of a computer-displayed cursor along a track on a CRT screen. Different track orientations required different patterns of movement not entailing a single generalized motor program. Experiment 1 shows that variable track performance with a given control system, results in better transfer to novel tracks than does fixed practice. Experiment 2 demonstrates that altering the control system disrupts performance whether or not the required movements remain the same. These results indicate the need for a fundamental modification of schema theory, such that a schematic representation of effector-environment relations (effector function) is available independently of particular movement patterns used in its acquisition.     

The schematic representation of effector function underlying perceptual-motor skill

Conceptual and methodological problems related to Schmidt' (1975) motor schema theory are discussed. In particular, the motor schema is interpreted as representing the dynamics of the system being controlled, which may or may not be associated with a referent movement pattern. Furthermore, it is suggested that prior familiarity with a control system's dynamics is a critical but uncontrolled factor in tests of the theory, and largely accounts for their equivocal findings. These ideas are examined by two experiments in which subjects had to bimanually control the movement of a computer-displayed cursor along a track on a CRT screen. Different track orientations required different patterns of movement not entailing a single generalized motor program. Experiment 1 shows that variable track performance with a given control system, results in better transfer to novel tracks than does fixed practice. Experiment 2 demonstrates that altering the control system disrupts performance whether or not the required movements remain the same. These results indicate the need for a fundamental modification of schema theory, such that a schematic representation of effector-environment relations (effector function) is available independently of particular movement patterns used in its acquisition.     

Using movement and intentions to understand human activity

During perception, people segment continuous activity into discrete events. They do so in part by monitoring changes in features of an ongoing activity. Characterizing these features is important for theories of event perception and may be helpful for designing information systems. The three experiments reported here asked whether the body movements of an actor predict when viewers will perceive event boundaries. Body movements were recorded using a magnetic motion tracking system and compared with viewers’ segmentation of his activity into events. Changes in movement features were strongly associated with segmentation. This was more true for fine-grained than for coarse-grained boundaries, and was strengthened when the stimulus displays were reduced from live-action movies to simplified animations. These results suggest that movement variables play an important role in the process of segmenting activity into meaningful events, and that the influence of movement on segmentation depends on the availability of other information sources.     

Pigeons learn virtual patterned-string problems in a computerized touch screen environment

For many decades, developmental and comparative psychologists have used a variety of string tasks to assess the perceptual and cognitive capabilities of human children of different ages and different species of nonhuman animals. The most important and widely used of these problems are patterned-string tasks, in which the organism is shown two or more strings, only one of which is connected to a reward. The organism must determine which string is attached to the reward and pull it. We report a new way to implement patterned-string tasks via a computerized touch screen apparatus. Pigeons successfully learned such virtual patterned-string tasks and exhibited the same general performance profile as animals given conventional patterned-string tasks. In addition, variations in the length, separation, and alignment of the strings reliably affected the pigeons’ virtual string-pulling behavior. These results not only testify to the power and versatility of our computerized string task, but they also demonstrate that pigeons can concurrently contend with a broad range of demanding patterned-string problems, thereby eliminating many alternative interpretations of their behavior. The virtual patterned-string task may thus permit expanded exploration of other species and variables which would be unlikely to be undertaken either because of inadequacies of conventional methodology or sensorimotor limitations of the studied organisms.     

Sibling Teenage Pregnancy and Clinic-Referred Girls’ Condom Use: The Protective Role of Maternal Monitoring

Younger sisters of teenage parents have elevated rates of engaging in unprotected sex. This may result from changes in parenting behavior after a sibling becomes pregnant or impregnates a partner, and be particularly pronounced for girls seeking mental health treatment. The current study examines condom use over time in 211 African-American girls recruited from outpatient psychiatric clinics. Findings indicate that having a sibling with a teenage pregnancy history predicts less consistent condom use 2 years later. After accounting for earlier condom use and mental health problems, maternal monitoring moderates condom use such that for girls with a sibling with a pregnancy history, more vigilant maternal monitoring is associated with increased condom use, while for girls with no sibling pregnancy history, maternal monitoring is unrelated to adolescents’ condom use 2 years later. Findings suggest that targeted interventions to increase maternal monitoring of high-risk teens may be beneficial for girls with a sibling history of teenage pregnancy.     

Representational momentum in children born preterm and at term

The term representational momentum (RM) refers to the idea that our memory representations for moving objects incorporate information about movement – a fact that can lead us to make errors when judging an object’s location (the RM effect). In this study, we explored the RM effect in a sample of children born very prematurely and a sample born at term. Because preterm children are known to be at risk for problems with motion perception, we anticipated that they would show a weaker or absent RM effect. This prediction was confirmed. In addition, we found that, in both samples of children, 5–6 year olds showed a reduced RM effect compared to 7–9 year olds. These results demonstrate that the ability to represent motion information in memory shows continued development over this age range, and may help to elucidate factors contributing to problems with fine and gross motor planning and execution that have been observed in the preterm population. We propose that problems affecting the formation, maintenance, or use of predictive models, or motion extrapolation skills, may have cascading effects on the development of other abilities.     

Developmental coordination disorder: associated problems in attention,learning, and psychosocial adjustment

This study investigated the problems of attention, learning and psychosocial adjustment evidenced by children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). Forty-five children identified with DCD, 51 children identified as being suspect for DCD and 78 comparison children without motor problems on standardized tests of motor function participated in this study. Results revealed that both children with DCD and children suspect for DCD obtained significantly poorer scores on measures of attention and learning (reading, writing and spelling) than comparison children. Children with DCD and those suspect for DCD were also found to evidence a relatively high level of social problems and display a relatively high level of somatic complaints based on parent report. These findings indicate that all children with movement problems are at risk for problems in attention, learning and psychosocial adjustment. Assessment of children with movement problems, regardless of the degree or severity of these problems should examine a wide range of functions in addition to motor functioning. Such an approach, would assist in determining the types of intervention that would provide the most benefit to these children.     

Abstract levels of motor control in prehension: Normal and pathological performance

Voluntary motor pattern generation is typically assumed to be organized hierarchically, with an abstract (effector independent) upper level which constrains the lower levels. There are at least two advantages of such an organization: it allows the system to exploit its redundancy, and when controlling a very large number of degrees of freedom the burden of control can be distributed over a sequence of stages. Experiments are reviewed which provide a consistent body of evidence in support of the contention that there is an effector independent level of motor representation in prehension. This is consistent with a hierarchically organized motor pattern generator. One set of experiments demonstrated that during active movement of a hand-held load, the coupling of grip force with movement induced load force is independent of how the load is grasped or how it is actively moved. A second set of experiments demonstrated that the movement patterns observed during reach-to-grasp are preserved over changes in the effector system used. Extensions and replications of these experiments with Parkinson's patients illustrates the idea that neurological problems may affect different levels of the control hierarchy suggesting that these levels may be anatomically as well as functionally distinguishable.PsycINFO classification: 2330; 2520; 3297     

The New Age: Towards a Market Model

The problem of how the New Age may be defined is widely acknowledged among commentators. It is hard to delineate and does not fit easily into existing analytical categories. This paper will review how scholars have conceptualised the movement. It will discuss the problems inherent in attempting to specify its constituents, fix its limits, and characterise its organisational forms. The later sections advances the argument that some of its most distinctive characteristics may be accounted for by acknowledging the market dynamics at play in New Age milieux. It is proposed that the diffuse overall shape of the movement is the result of determinate commercial institutional arrangements.     

Reinvestment in one versus one in-field and shoot-out field hockey performance

The theory of reinvestment suggests that inappropriate use of attention to consciously engage in movements or decisions (movement specific reinvestment or decision specific reinvestment) can result in disrupted performance. We used moderation analysis to investigate the association between these forms of reinvestment and performance during one versus one in-field and shoot-out scenarios during field hockey. We expected that the propensity for reinvestment would be negatively associated with shoot-out performance but not in-field performance, because monitoring many other players during in-field play diverts attention away from conscious engagement in movements or decisions. No association was evident between decision specific reinvestment and in-field or shoot-out performance. However, a higher propensity for movement specific reinvestment (specifically, conscious motor processing) was negatively associated with shoot-out performance, but not in-field performance. We speculate that the necessity to shift between many non-static attentional demands during in-field situations may reduce capacity for movement specific reinvestment during performance.