In two experiments, children and adults made judgments about drawings of a person walking or running. The drawings varied according to whether action lines, background lines, or no lines were present. Seven and nine year olds offered equivalent judgments of action and background lines, whereas adults distinguished between these devices. (BC)

Solicited 6- to 10-year olds' and adults' perceptually ambiguous drawings to which two different meanings could be attributed. Analyzed movement sequences to determine whether movements were modified in ways determined by the model's meaning. Found that drawing was sensitive to meaning at all ages. Sensitivity differed as a function of the model…

An atlatl is a thrower for propelling a flexible dart through the air. Describes a class investigation for making an atlatl using a piece of dowel. (Author/MM)

Studied the effectiveness of three backward masks (meta-contrast) in reducing apparent motion strategy in the inspection time (IT) paradigm and assessing putative personality effects on masking and IT. Findings for 50 psychology students suggest that, although the use of apparent motion cues in the mask condition weakens the correlation between IT…

Explains a physics experiment on the dynamics of impact cratering. Measures the spreading velocity of the impact wave and the acoustic signal. (YDS)

How do we talk about events we perceive? And how tight is the connection between linguistic and nonlinguistic representations of events? To address these questions, we experimentally compared motion descriptions produced by children and adults in two typologically distinct languages, Greek and English. Our findings confirm a well-known asymmetry…

One thing scientists study is how objects move. A famous scientist named Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) spent a lot of time observing objects in motion and came up with three laws that describe how things move. This explanation only deals with the first of his three laws of motion. Newton's First Law of Motion says that moving objects will continue…

Previous research has demonstrated that compensatory movements for changes in visuomotor coupling often are not consciously detected. But what factors affect the conscious detection of such changes? This issue was addressed in 4 experiments. Participants carried out a drawing task in which the relative velocity between the actual movement and its…

This study investigated multisensory interactions in the perception of auditory and visual motion. When auditory and visual apparent motion streams are presented concurrently in opposite directions, participants often fail to discriminate the direction of motion of the auditory stream, whereas perception of the visual stream is unaffected by the…

The perception of 2nd-order, texture-contrast-defined motion was studied for apparent-motion stimuli composed of a pair of spatially displaced, simultaneously visible checkerboards. It was found that background-relative, counter-changing contrast provided the informational basis for the perception of 2nd-order apparent motion; motion began where…

In 3 experiments, the authors investigated the impact of action goals on the production of discrete bimanual responses. Similar to a bartender putting 2 glasses simultaneously on a shelf, participants placed 2 objects into either parallel or opposite orientations by carrying out either mirror-symmetrical or mirror-asymmetrical movements. In…

An elementary method, based on the use of complex variables, is proposed for solving the equation of motion of a simple harmonic oscillator. The method is first applied to the equation of motion for an undamped oscillator and it is then extended to the more important case of a damped oscillator. It is finally shown that the method can readily be…

Many moments that humans see naturally suggest something other than themselves. This is a legacy from the remotest time. Among animals, movements of prey and predator give each an indication of what may happen next and a basis for choosing their own actions. As species evolved, the movements that could be made and the meanings that could be…

The neuromuscular control aspect of cycling has been investigated through the effects of modifying posture and cadence. These studies show that changing posture has a more profound influence on neuromuscular coordination than does changing slope. Most of the changes with standing posture occur late in the downstroke: increased ankle and knee joint…

Women are more prone to anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury during cutting sports than men. The purpose of this study was to examine knee kinematic and ground reaction forces (GRF) differences between genders during cutting. Male and female athletes performed cutting trials while force platform and video data were recorded (180 Hz).…