The relationship of impulse to response timing error

This paper examines the relationship between response impulse and timing error in 200 msec discrete timing responses over a range of movement velocities and system masses. The results from two experiments showed that variable timing error decreased as both movement velocity and the mass of the system to be moved increased. The variability of force proportional to force (measured either as impulse or peak force) decreased curvilinearly as force out-put increased. The correlations between each of these parameters and variable timing errors, calculated on a group mean basis, ranged between.91 and.95. The ability to predict the movement time outcome of each individual trial from impulse-related parameters was considerably reduced, although the relationship between the various kinematic and kinetic parameters did strengthen as the movement velocity approached maximum. Collectively, the findings show the size of impulse is related to movement timing error, although it is premature argue that impulse variability is a causal agent of timing error.     

Facilitating mother-infant communication: A treatment model for high-risk and developmentally-delayed infants

The relationship between mother-infant interaction and interactive communication competence in high-risk and developmentally-delayed children is examined and an inter vention program that attempts to optimize mother-infant interaction is described. Interaction patterns in populations with atypical infants are consistently found to be different from those in families with normally developing infants. The risk and delayed infants show fewer, less intense, and developmentally-delayed social responses and their mothers compensate with more frequent and often intensive forms of social interaction. An intervention model is presented that (1) evaluates the mother on a hierarchy of interaction styles that range from low to high levels of sensitivity and (2) modifies interaction style through the use of easy-to-learn techniques with the goal of moving the mother to an optimal level in the defined hierarchy of social behavior.     

Friendship and social competence in a sample of preschool children attending Head Start

Relations between friendship (operationalized as reciprocated or nonreciprocated sociometric choices) and social competence were studied for children (mostly African American) attending Head Start. Initial analyses showed that children with reciprocated friends had higher social competence scores than children without reciprocated friends. Correlations suggested that the number of reciprocated friendships was associated with the social competence indicators studied here. Beyond the cost of having no reciprocated friends, having nonreciprocated friendships was not a liability. Cross-time analyses suggested differing patterns of relations for boys and girls. Having versus not having a reciprocated friend was unstable across time, because there was a trend toward participating in reciprocated friendships from 3 to 4 years of age (most older children had at least 1 reciprocated friend). For girls there was a positive relation between the number of reciprocated friendships at Time 1 and at Time 2. No benefit (in terms of social competence) was found for children making the transition from 1 classroom to the next with a friend.     

Changes in the structure of children's isometric force variability with practice

This study examined the effect of age and practice on the structure of children's force variability to test the information processing hypothesis that a reduction of sensorimotor system noise accounts in large part for age-related reductions in perceptual-motor performance variability. In the study, 6-year-olds, 10-year-olds, and young adults practiced on 5 consecutive days (15 trials/day), maintaining for 15-s trials a constant level of force (5 or 25% of maximum voluntary contraction) against an object using a pinch grip (thumb and index finger). With increasing age, the amount of force error and variability decreased, but the sequential structure of variability increased in irregularity. With practice, children reduced the amount of variability by changing the structure of the force output so as to be more similar to that of their older counterparts. The findings provide further evidence that practice-driven changes in the structure of force output, rather than a decline in the amount of white noise, largely account for age-related reductions in the amount of force variability.     

Coordination changes in the early stages of learning to cascade juggle

The experiment was setup to examine the coordination changes in assembling the movement form of 3-ball cascade juggling. Eight adult participants learned to juggle over 4 weeks of practice. Juggling scores were recorded at each session and performance was videotaped at eight selected sessions for purposes of movement analysis. Once the basic spatial and temporal constraints on cascade juggling were satisfied, and the figure-8 juggling mode was established, temporal modulations of the relative motions of the hands were emphasized. All participants learned to juggle and the increase over practice in the number of consecutive balls caught was best fit with a power law. The non-proportional rate of performance increment was consistent with the qualitative changes in the form of the hand and ball movement kinematics that occurred over practice.     

Time scales in motor learning and development

A theoretical framework based on the concepts and tools of nonlinear dynamical systems is advanced to account for both the persistent and transitory changes traditionally shown for the learning and development of motor skills. The multiple time scales of change in task outcome over time are interpreted as originating from the system's trajectory on an evolving attractor landscape. Different bifurcations between attractor organizations and transient phenomena can lead to exponential, power law, or S-shaped learning curves. This unified dynamical account of the functions and time scales in motor learning and development offers several new hypotheses for future research on the nature of change in learning theory.     

Viewpoint dependence in visual and haptic object recognition

On the whole, people recognize objects best when they see the objects from a familiar view and worse when they see the objects from views that were previously occluded from sight. Unexpectedly, we found haptic object recognition to be viewpoint-specific as well, even though hand movements were unrestricted. This viewpoint dependence was due to the hands preferring the back "view" of the objects. Furthermore, when the sensory modalities (visual vs. haptic) differed between learning an object and recognizing it, recognition performance was best when the objects were rotated back-to-front between learning and recognition. Our data indicate that the visual system recognizes the front view of objects best, whereas the hand recognizes objects best from the back.     

Self-injurious behavior: gene-brain-behavior relationships

This paper summarizes a conference held at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development on December 6-7, 1999, on self-injurious behavior [SIB] in developmental disabilities. Twenty-six of the top researchers in the U.S. from this field representing 13 different disciplines discussed environmental mechanisms, epidemiology, behavioral and pharmacological intervention strategies, neurochemical substrates, genetic syndromes in which SIB is a prominent behavioral phenotype, neurobiological and neurodevelopmental factors affecting SIB in humans as well as a variety of animal models of SIB. Findings over the last decade, especially new discoveries since 1995, were emphasized. SIB is a rapidly growing area of scientific interest to both basic and applied researchers. In many respects it is a model for the study of gene-brain-behavior relationships in developmental disabilities.     

Impulse and Movement Space-Time Variability

In 3 experiments, the authors examined movement space-time variability as a function of the force-time properties of the initial impulse in a movement timing task. In the range of motion and movement time task conditions, peak force, initial rate of force, and force duration were manipulated either independently or in combination across a range of parameter values. The findings showed that (a) impulse variability is predicted well by the elaboration of the isometric force variability scaling functions of L. G. Carlton, K. H. Kim, Y. T. Liu, and K. M. Newell (1993) to movement, and (b) the movement spatial and temporal outcome variability are complementary and well predicted by an equation treating the variance of force and time in Newton's 2nd law as independent random variables. Collectively, the findings suggest that movement outcome variability is the product of a coherent space-time function that is driven by the nonlinear scaling of the force-time properties of the initial impulse.     

Visual feedback of hand trajectory and the development of infant prehension

The purpose of this longitudinal infant study was to investigate the influence of visual information of the hand trajectory in the development of reaching movements in prehension. Ten infants were observed biweekly from the age of 10 weeks to 28 weeks and 1 yr. The reach kinematics were analyzed at age of reach onset, 6 mo and 1 yr of age. The results showed that infants reached for objects earlier when the visual feedback of the hand trajectory and the object were available. However, visual feedback of the hand trajectory did not change the movement speed and smoothness of the reach component at 6 mo and 1 yr of age. Infants reached for the larger object earlier and with higher velocity than for the smaller object. Visual feedback of the hand facilitates the age of reaching onset, but when the reaching movements become sufficiently stable, infants perform equally well with or without visual trajectory feedback of the hand.