Steven J. Harrison

Horsing around: spontaneous four-legged coordination.

ABSTRACT Motivated by previous research suggesting that informational and mechanical interlimb coupling can stabilize rhythmic movement patterns, the authors show that stable 4-legged patterns between 2 individuals, either walking or running, can emerge unintentionally from simple forms of coupling. Specifically, they show that the leg movements of pairs of naive individuals become spontaneously phase locked when visually or mechanically coupled via a foam appendage. Analysis of each of the phase locked trials revealed distinct preferences for particular 4-legged patterns, with interpersonal in- and anti-phase coordination patterns (equitable with quadruped pace and trot, respectively) observed almost exclusively. Preference for either pattern depended on the strength of coupling. The authors discuss these findings in light of previous claims that the patterns of human and animal locomotion—as well as coordinated movements in general—can emerge from lawful coupling relations that exist between the subcomponents of perceptual-motor systems.

Self-organized complementary joint action: Behavioral dynamics of an interpersonal collision-avoidance task.

Understanding stable patterns of interpersonal movement coordination is essential to understanding successful social interaction and activity (i.e., joint action). Previous research investigating such coordination has primarily focused on the synchronization of simple rhythmic movements (e.g., finger/forearm oscillations or pendulum swinging). Very few studies, however, have explored the stable patterns of coordination that emerge during task-directed complementary coordination tasks. Thus, the aim of the current study was to investigate and model the behavioral dynamics of a complementary collision-avoidance task. Participant pairs performed a repetitive targeting task in which they moved computer stimuli back and forth between sets of target locations without colliding into each other. The results revealed that pairs quickly converged onto a stable, asymmetric pattern of movement coordination that reflected differential control across participants, with 1 participant adopting a more straight-line movement trajectory between targets, and the other participant adopting a more elliptical trajectory between targets. This asymmetric movement pattern was also characterized by a phase lag between participants and was essential to task success. Coupling directionality analysis and dynamical modeling revealed that this dynamic regime was due to participant-specific differences in the coupling functions that defined the task-dynamics of participant pairs. Collectively, the current findings provide evidence that the dynamical coordination processes previously identified to underlie simple motor synchronization can also support more complex, goal-directed, joint action behavior, and can participate the spontaneous emergence of complementary joint action roles.

Reliability and validity of pendulum test measures of spasticity obtained with the Polhemus tracking system from patients with chronic stroke

BackgroundSpasticity is a common impairment accompanying stroke. Spasticity of the quadriceps femoris muscle can be quantified using the pendulum test. The measurement properties of pendular kinematics captured using a magnetic tracking system has not been studied among patients who have experienced a stroke. Therefore, this study describes the test-retest reliability and known groups and convergent validity of the pendulum test measures obtained with the Polhemus tracking system.MethodsEight patients with chronic stroke underwent pendulum tests with their affected and unaffected lower limbs, with and without the addition of a 2.2 kg cuff weight at the ankle, using the Polhemus magnetic tracking system. Also measured bilaterally were knee resting angles, Ashworth scores (grades 0–4) of quadriceps femoris muscles, patellar tendon (knee jerk) reflexes (grades 0–4), and isometric knee extension force.ResultsThree measures obtained from pendular traces of the affected side were reliable (intraclass correlation coefficient ≥ .844). Known groups validity was confirmed by demonstration of a significant difference in the measurements between sides. Convergent validity was supported by correlations ≥ .57 between pendulum test measures and other measures reflective of spasticity.ConclusionPendulum test measures obtained with the Polhemus tracking system from the affected side of patients with stroke have good test-retest reliability and both known groups and convergent validity.

Using Vision and Dynamic Touch to Perceive the Affordances of Tools

The information that people use to perceive whether a tool is suitable for a certain task depends on what is available at a given time. Visually scanning a tool and wielding it each provide information about the functional attributes of the tool. In experiment 1, we investigated the relative contributions of vision and dynamic touch to perceiving the suitability of various tools for various tasks. The results show that, when both vision and dynamic touch are available, the visual information dominates. When limited to dynamic touch, ratings of suitability are constrained by the inertial properties of the tool, and the inertial properties that are exploited depend on the task. In experiment 2, we asked whether the manner in which a tool is manipulated in exploration depends on the task for which it is being evaluated. The results suggest that tools are manipulated in ways that reflect intentions to perceive particular affordances. Exploratory movements sometimes mimic performatory movements.

Lateral ball interception: hand movements during linear ball trajectories

Part of understanding how acts are coordinated is identifying the information that guides movements. In the case of catching a ball within arm’s reach, that identification has been complicated by empirical disparities concerning hand-movement reversals during catching. Jacobs and Michaels (J Exp Psychol Hum 32: 443–458, 2006) found unilateral reversals in a paradigm in which balls swung down in an arc; this implicated a particular optical variable, the ratio of lateral velocity to expansion velocity. Montagne et al. (Exp Brain Res 129:87–92, 1999) reported bilateral reversals when balls approached along a linear trajectory, which implicated a different variable, lateral ball position. The research reported here attempted to replicate Montagne et al.’s (Exp Brain Res 129:87–92, 1999) findings. In Experiment 1, participants caught balls rolling toward them across a table, under full lighting using monocular or binocular viewing; in Experiment 2, participants caught luminous balls with a luminous glove in an otherwise dark room. Using Montagne et al.’s (Exp Brain Res 129:87–92, 1999) criterion, we observed no movement reversals in any condition, though some aspects of hand movements suggested the relevance of lateral ball position. The results of Experiment 3, which asked perceivers to indicate only where rods pointed, suggested that lateral position effects were a bias that is unrelated to interception. The ratio of lateral velocity to expansion appears to be a better variable for explaining hand trajectories in lateral interception.

Location but not amount of stimulus occlusion influences the stability of visuo-motor coordination.

The current study examined whether the amount and location of available movement information influenced the stability of visuo-motor coordination. Participants coordinated a hand-held pendulum with an oscillating visual stimulus in an inphase and antiphase manner. The effects of occluding different amounts of phase at different phase locations were examined. Occluding the 0°/180° phase locations (end-points) significantly increased the variability of the visuo-motor coordination. The amount of occlusion had little or no affect on the stability of the coordination. We concluded that the end-points of a visual rhythm are privileged and provide access to movement information that ensures stable coordination. The results are discussed with respect to the proposal of Bingham and colleagues (e.g., Bingham GP. Ecol Psychol 16:45–53, 2004a; Wilson AD, Collins DR, Bingham GP. Exp Brain Res 165:351–361, 2005a) that the relevant information for rhythmic visual coordination is relative direction information.

Deterministic and Stochastic Postural Processes: Effects of Task, Environment, and Age

ABSTRACT Upright standing is always environmentally embedded and typically co-occurs with another (suprapostural) activity. In the present study, the authors investigate how these facts affect postural dynamics in an experiment in which younger (M age = 20.23 years, SD = 2.02 years) and older (M age = 75.26 years, SD = 4.87 years) participants performed a task of detecting letters in text or maintaining gaze within a target while standing upright in a structured or nonstructured stationary environment. They extracted the coefficients of drift (indexing attractor strength) and diffusion (indexing noise strength) from the center of pressure (COP) time series in anteroposterior (AP) and mediolateral (ML) axes. COP standard deviation decreased with drift and increased with diffusion. The authors found that structure reduced AP diffusion for both groups and that letter detection reduced younger SD AP (primarily by diffusion decrease) and increased older SD ML (primarily by drift decrease). For older and younger participants, ML drift was lower during letter detection. Further, in older letter detection, larger visual contrast sensitivity was associated with larger ML drift and smaller SD ML, raising the hypotheses that ML sway helps information detection and reflects neurophysiological age.

Perceiving Action-Relevant Properties of Tools Through Dynamic Touch: Effects of Mass Distribution, Exploration Style, and Intention

At issue in the present series of experiments was the ability to prospectively perceive the action-relevant properties of hand-held tools by means of dynamic touch. In Experiment 1, participants judged object move-ability. In Experiment 2, participants judged how difficult an object would be to hold if held horizontally, and in Experiments 3 and 4, participants rated how fast objects could be rotated. In each experiment, the first and second moments of mass distribution of the objects were systematically varied. Manipulations of wielding speed and orientation during restricted exploration revealed perception to be constrained by (a) the moments of mass distribution of the hand-tool system, (b) the qualities of exploratory wielding movements, and (c) the intention to perceive each specific property. The results are considered in the context of the ecological theory of dynamic touch. Implications for accounts of the informational basis of dynamic touch and for the development of a theory of haptically perceiving the affordance properties of tools are discussed.

Place learning by mechanical contact

SUMMARY For some animals (e.g. the night-active wandering spider) the encounters with the habitat that result in place learning are predominantly mechanical. We asked whether place learning limited to mechanical contact, like place learning in general, entails vectors tied to individual landmarks and relations between landmarks. We constructed minimal environments for blindfolded human participants. Landmarks were raised steps. ‘Home’ was a mechanically indistinct location. Travel was linear. The mechanical contacts were those of walking, stepping, and probing with a soft-tipped cane. Home-orienting activities preceded tests of finding home from a given location with landmarks unchanged or (unbeknown to participants) shifted. In a one-landmark environment, perceived home shifted in the same direction, with the same magnitude, as the shifted landmark. In an environment of two landmarks located in the same direction from home, shifting the further landmark toward home resulted in a change in homes perceived location that preserved the original ratio of distances separating home, nearer landmark, and further landmark. Both findings were invariant over the travel route to the test location and repetitions of testing. It seems, therefore, that for humans (and, perhaps, for wandering spiders), mechanical contact can reveal the vectors and relations specifying places.

Interleg Coordination in Quiet Standing: Influence of Age and Visual Environment on Noise and Stability

ABSTRACT The authors reexamined reported effects of age, illumination, and stationary visible structure on the net center of pressure (COP) derived from dual, side-by-side force plates (J. Kinsella-Shaw, S. Harrison, C. Colon-Semenza, & M. Turvey, 2006) from the perspective of axial postural control. They questioned how left and right COP x (t), COP y (t), and vertically oriented ground reactive force, GRF z (t), coordinated during quiet standing. The Cross- recurrence Quantification (CRQ) revealed that coordination was primarily between fluctuations of similar direction, with coordination of left and right COP y (t) (anteroposterior fluctuations) dominant. CRQ also revealed that (a) illumination and structure affected the interlimb dynamics of older (M age = 72.2 ± 4.90 years) participants more than their younger (M age = 22.8 ± 0.83 years) counterparts, and (b) older participants exhibited greater interlimb entrainment (dynamical stability) in the presence of greater interlimb noise.