Recent research has shown that 2-year-olds fail at a task that ostensibly only requires the ability to understand that solid objects cannot pass through other solid objects. Two experiments were conducted in which 2- and 3-year-olds judged the stopping point of an object as it moved at varying speeds along a path and behind an occluder, stopping…

Recent studies (Chiviacowsky & Wulf, 2002, 2005) have shown that learners prefer to receive feedback after they believe they had a "good" rather than "poor" trial. The present study followed up on this finding and examined whether learning would benefit if individuals received feedback after good relative to poor trials. Participants practiced a…

Voluntary motor actions aim at and are thus governed by predictable action effects. Therefore, representations of an action's effects normally must become activated prior to the action itself. In 5 psychological refractory period experiments the authors investigated whether the activation of such effect representations coincides with the response…

Embodied approaches to cognition propose that our own actions influence our understanding of the world. Do other people's actions also have this influence? The present studies show that perceiving another person's actions changes the way people think about objects in a scene. In Study 1, participants viewed a photograph and answered a question…

This article describes the use of the Serial Perceptual-Motor Discriminator for analyzing serial perceptual-motor responses. (RC)

A paradox in studying sensory perception is that people often attend to a stimulus which provides the least optimal information. Usually, this is a visual stimulus. The study sought to lessen this reliance on vision by training subjects to respond to proprioceptive stimuli. Results are discussed. (Author/JL)

The assessment of fundamental motor skills in early learners is critical to the overall well-being and physical development of the students within the physical education setting. Olrich (2002) has suggested that any physical education program must be designed to assess both measures of physical fitness and fundamental motor skills in all students.…

Two years ago, the rapid retirement of the "baby boomer artisans" in vast numbers threatened to erode the competitiveness of Japanese manufacturers (i.e., the 2007 problem). This study proposes a practical process for extracting skills and designing a training system, to accelerate the learning of skills in production fields by younger…

This study evaluates the relationships that exist between three types of visual and perceptual-motor tasks (coincidence-anticipation, tracking with rotary pursuit, and a unique two-dimensional discrete motor task) and investigates the nature of learning demonstrated by the subjects on each of the three tasks. Thirty male students were given 20…

Results of a study of 10- and 11- month-old infants support Piaget's hypothesis that practical, action-based knowledge during infancy is involved in achievement of spatial understanding and that the experience of self-initiated locomotion contributes to spatial development. (Author/NH)

This paper analyses training as a control problem in the state-space of the adaption-automation of the trainee, and develops a strategy for training based upon the epistemological problems of the trainee. (Editor)

Evaluated psychological mechanisms underlying imitation of facial actions in 40 newborn infants. Results showed imitation of head movement and a tongue-protrusion gesture. Subjects imitated from memory after displays had stopped. (RJC)

Forty adult females were required to learn a gross motor task involving kicking a ball. Results indicated that kinesthetic stimulation during practice and retention phases seemed to enhance task acquisition. Stimulation affected the motor memory processes and left a more stable representation of the movement pattern. (Author/JOW)

The relationship between sense-perception and science studied by Ernst Mach is described. The author's view is that the distinction Mach makes between two different kinds of metrical concept is Mach's greatest contribution to science. (KR)