Learning algebra is difficult for many students in part because of an emphasis on the memorization of abstract rules. Algebraic reasoners across expertise levels often rely on perceptual-motor strategies to make these rules meaningful and memorable. However, in many cases, rules are provided as patterns to be memorized verbally, with little overt…

Saccadic endpoint variability is often viewed as the outcome of neural noise occurring during sensorimotor processing. However, part of this variability might result from operant learning. We tested this hypothesis by reinforcing dispersions of saccadic amplitude distributions, while maintaining constant their medians. In a first experiment we…

Observing actions and understanding sentences about actions activates corresponding motor processes in the observer-comprehender. In 5 experiments, the authors addressed 2 novel questions regarding language-based motor resonance. The 1st question asks whether visual motion that is associated with an action produces motor resonance in sentence…

An idea is presented for a class project in motor learning which emphasizes stimulating student involvement in motor learning research. The project enables student to learn about experimental design, experimental control, equipment construction, subject solicitation, and data analysis and to stimulate their critical and logical thinking. (JN)

Imaginal perspective switches are often considered to be difficult, because they call for additional cognitive transformations of object coordinates (transformation hypothesis). Recent research suggests that problems can also result from conflicts between incompatible sensorimotor and cognitive object location codes during response specification…

The mechanisms of perceptual learning are analyzed theoretically, probed in an orientation-discrimination experiment involving a novel nonstationary context manipulation, and instantiated in a detailed computational model. Two hypotheses are examined: modification of early cortical representations versus task-specific selective reweighting.…

IN ORDER TO INVESTIGATE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SENSORIMOTOR EXPERIENCE AND THE FORMATION OF CONCEPTS IN CHILDHOOD, 2 GROUPS OF CHILDREN--1 MOTORICALLY NORMAL, THE OTHER COMPOSED OF CEREBRAL PALSIED CHILDREN--WERE COMPARED FOR ACQUISITION OF SIMPLE ACTION AND OBJECT CONCEPTS. THREE HYPOTHESES WERE TESTED. IT WAS PREDICTED (1) THAT CEREBRAL…