See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/274996586

The Past and Future of Motor Learning and Control: What Is the Proper Level of
Description and Analysis?

Article in Kinesiology Review · February 2014

DOI: 10.1123/kr.2014-0035

CITATIONS READS

27 2,799

1 author:

Howard Zelaznik
Purdue University
126 PUBLICATIONS 6,896 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Howard Zelaznik on 12 April 2021.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Kinesiology Review, 2014, 3, 38-43
http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/kr.2014-0035
Official Publication of NAK and AKA
© 2014 by The National Academy of Kinesiology www.KR-Journal.com
THE ACADEMY PAPERS

The Past and Future of Motor Learning and Control:

What Is the Proper Level of Description and Analysis?
Howard N. Zelaznik

Over the past 40 years the research area of motor learning and control has developed into a field closely aligned
with information processing in neuroscience. The basic, implicit assumption is that motor learning and control
is the domain of the brain. Several crucial studies and developments from the past and the present are presented
and discussed that highlight this position. The future of following that current path is discussed. Then, the
case is made that the control of movement is not just a brain process, and thus scientists in kinesiology need
to study movement behavior at a coarser level of analysis. Motor control in kinesiology should use the Newell
framework and thus should examine the nature of individual attributes, environmental information, and task
constraints on learning and performance of motor skills.

Even without doing a quantitative analysis of
research publications, it is clear there has been an explo-
sion in motor learning and control research. When I began
graduate school in 1974, the primary journals for motor
learning and control research were Research Quarterly
for Exercise and Sport, Journal of Motor Behavior, and
Perceptual & Motor Skills. There were a few experimental
psychology and child developmental psychology journals
that occasionally entertained and published work in motor
skill learning, development, and control (although that
word was not used at that time). However, those psychol-
ogy journals would only accept papers if the paper was
viewed as being mainstream psychology. Happily, this
issue is no longer viable; motor control is mainstream
psychology. Many journals in a plethora of disciplines
now readily accept human motor learning and control
papers. Thus, we are experiencing very good times. That
being stated, in this article I will present an argument
that we are quickly losing what motor control should be
for our field of kinesiology. We (myself included) have
become enamored with the small-level analysis or with
demonstrating the differences between neurologically
intact individuals compared with neurologically compro-
mised. We are not describing and understanding human
movement control and learning at the level of description
that makes kinesiology special.
Before presenting my main argument, I fulfill my
charge from the National Academy of Kinesiology to
describe some of the historical landmarks in research in
motor learning and control. As I was an undergraduate
student from 1969 through 1974 and a graduate student
from 1974 through 1978, I will start my historical ret-
rospective in the 1970s. Many of us noted researchers
Zelaznik (NAK Fellow #337) is a professor in the Dept. of
Health and Kinesiology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN.
typically remember and rely upon the work that we
knew so well from our graduate school days and tend to
discount work before and after that important period in
our academic lives (Ivry, personal communication 1999).
Most current learning and control researchers in
kinesiology, educated in the mid-1960s through the late
1970s remember the pivotal work by an experimental
psychologist, Jack Adams (1971), who made the strong
claim that motor skill learning needed to become a field
driven by theory. Theory would provide the intellectual
currency to fund the research enterprise. Furthermore,
Adams was a mentor to two graduate students (at slightly
different times), Richard A. Schmidt and Karl M. Newell,
who have become two giants in motor learning and
control. As Adams came from the classical information
processing approach, he argued that motor learning and
control would benefit from the study of simple motor
tasks, in which there was a large database cataloging
effects of independent variables. He chose the graded,
slow linear-positioning task that required a blindfolded
subject to move a pointer on a linear trackway to a par-
ticular location or a particular distance. Obviously, as the
subject was blindfolded, view of the task was shielded
and learning could only occur if the research participant
had some source of information about the nature of
inaccuracy. Given the paucity of intrinsic information
about the task, it was clearly demonstrated that external
information about success, called knowledge of results,
was crucial for learning.
Over the following seven or eight years, a plethora of
studies examined the nature of the quantity and schedul-
ing of knowledge of results in relation to the learning of
very simple tasks (Salmoni, Schmidt, & Walter, 1984).
Then, to show the potency or lack of potency of knowl-
edge of results schedules or other variables, performance
after knowledge of results was withdrawn was examined.
It was thought that the crucial test of the amount of

38

learning was the level of performance after knowledge
of results was withdrawn. This assumption was derived
from the implicit assumption that what was learned lived
inside of the person, and thus to see the strength of this
central representation, knowledge of results needed to
be withdrawn.
The information processing approach was related to
a strong assumption about the learning of motor skills.
The classic definition of learning in motor skills can be
traced back to the original undergraduate textbook of
Schmidt (1975a). Learning was defined as a change in the
internal state of a person that is relatively permanent as
a function of practice. This definition is very useful and
has guided much research; it leads to the inference that
learning is purely in the brain. In the enriched nonlabora-
tory environments outside of the laboratory, people have
Downloaded by Human Kinetics kims@hkusa.com on 03/20/17, Volume 3, Article Number 1
access to information about success and have rich sources
of feedback during the process of movement. Thus, the
perceptually impoverished environments that we all use
in our laboratories bias many studies to capture only the
processes that occur within an individual, as though s/he
lives in a movement bubble.
In general, the Adams theory came from the very
important and traditional information processing tradi-
tion, which can trace its roots at least back to the time
of Donders (1969; originally published in 1869), who
characterized information processing as a series of
sequential, independent stages of processing. The fact
that information processing was the popular and dominant
world view of experimental psychology (see the volumes
of the Attention and Performance Series, which was
initiated in 1969) coupled with a premiere psychologist
giving motor learning research a sense of mainstream
credibility led to an explosion of motor learning work
in the 1970s. The leaders of this revolution were Ron
Marteniuk, Richard A. Schmidt, George Stelmach, Karl
M. Newell, Ann Gentile, Richard Magill, and Waneen
Spiroduso, in no particular order.
Another set of events occurred in motor neurosci-
ence. Evarts (1968), a neuroscientist, also steeped in
behavioral-science approaches, developed a technique to
record single pyramidal tract motor neurons in a monkey
cortex. A monkey was trained to hold a handle in a neutral
position and was conditioned to push or pull on a handle
to obtain fruit juice as a reward. Evarts discovered that
the pyramidal tract neurons fired selectively, either when
the monkey pulled or pushed. Thus, the neurons were
selectively activated based upon the task. Then, Evarts set
up a pulley system, so that a weight was attached to the
handle. The setup, for example, would pull the handle if
the monkey were not holding it. To move the handle in in
the pulling direction, as conditioned, the monkey would
have to control the pushing force, even though the move-
ment was in the pulling direction. How did the pyramidal
tract neurons respond? Only the pushing neurons fired,
not the pulling neurons. Thus, Evarts discovered that these
neurons were coding the direction of application of force,
and not the direction of movement. In other words, the
pyramid tract motor neurons coded for the force vector.
Motor Learning and Control   39
This technique and result led to studies attempting to
discover other intrinsic underlying movement codes of
the motor cortex.
A research team led by Apostolos Georgopoulos
(Georgopoulos, Schwartz, & Kettner, 1986) recorded
242 neurons while an awake monkey was performing a
three-dimensional pointing task. Georgopoulos discov-
ered, much-like Evarts, that pyramidal tract neurons have
a maximum firing rate at a preferred movement direction.
Georgopoulos also found that each neuron exhibited a
tuning function, in which the firing rate would decrease as
the direction of movement moved farther away from the
preferred direction for that pyramidal tract neuron. Fur-
thermore, when a monkey moved to a three-dimensional
position in space, the weighted regression average of
these neurons produced a population vector that pointed
in the direction of motion. In other words, there was not
just one neuron responsible for a location; there was dis-
tributed control. Thus, control was not to be considered
like a piano metaphor, one key per one movement, but
more like an orchestra, where each instrument is involved
in the ensemble characteristics of a movement. Andy
Schwartz, a collaborator with Georgopoulos extended this
basic research technique. His team demonstrated that a
primate can drive a robotic arm by decoding the monkey’s
population vector to know where the monkey intends to
move (Velliste, Perel, Spalding, Whitford, & Schwartz,
2008). This development will have a tremendous impact
in the future on improving the functionality of individu-
als who have high cervical spinal damage and thus are
severely motorically restricted. I believe that decoding the
pyramidal tract neurons will drive exoskeletons to pro-
vide hemi- and quadriplegic individuals with functional
mobility and voluntary movement control.
Coupled with these single cell-recording techniques,
there has been an explosion in imaging capabilities, pri-
marily functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI),
that provide for the opportunity to describe the overall
pattern of brain activity in different functionally important
brain regions. These advances, coupled with the growth of
computation neural-motor control, has led to an explosion
of important research in understanding central nervous
system deficiencies as well as changes in brain activation
patterns as a function of aging.
Presently, the modal type of motor control and learn-
ing research has been centered on the discovery of brain
mechanisms or in examining differences between motor
learning and control for individuals who are neurologi-
cally compromised (for example, see Rose & Winstein,
2013). Furthermore, there is an emphasis on the effects
of training programs on the performance and learning of
laboratory tasks.
Thus, the present field of motor learning and control
is intimately tied to our past reliance on the assumption
that most of motor control and learning is the result of
brain processes. Furthermore, because of another stimu-
lus in kinesiology (the need to procure extramural fund-
ing), many motor control researchers have begun to focus
on individuals with central nervous system disorders,
 40  Zelaznik
such as Parkinson’s Disease, to document the myriad of
differences between these individuals and neurologically
intact ones. This latter research, I argue, also is heavily
dependent upon the notion that control resides within the
central nervous system.
Within the information-processing framework, the
future is easily predicted. We will continue to become
more focused upon the brain and more focused on
applied aspects of brain function as it relates to aging
and neurological compromise. This is the future path for
motor control research. But, it does not have to be this
way. In the following section, I argue that the meaning
of being a kinesiologist is that we should focus upon a
unique and coarser level of analysis and ask questions
concerning motor learning and control that make our
commitment to kinesiology, rather than to do work better
Downloaded by Human Kinetics kims@hkusa.com on 03/20/17, Volume 3, Article Number 1
suited to physical therapy, neurorobotics, and functional
neuroanatomy. Before laying out this argument, I must
state that the science done in the fields that I am saying
we should not be heavily invested in is wonderful. That
work is crucial. However, it is not the work that makes
kinesiology special within the structure of academic dis-
ciplines. We need a much more coarser grain of analysis.
The following paragraphs lay out these arguments.
The genesis of my arguments comes from several
lines of work and thinking. There are others, and this
paper is not meant to be an exhaustive intellectual
review and theory. Philosopher Alva Noë in two treatises
argues that perception and action are not two separate
processes—one that interprets the perceptual world, and
the other based upon internal models controls move-
ment. Furthermore, he argues that mind processes such
as consciousness are not the sole domain of the brain. In
2009, Noë stated
The fundamental assumption of much work on the
neuroscience of consciousness is, well, a neuroscien-
tific phenomenon. It happens inside us, in the brain. . . .
Consciousness does not happen in the brain. (p. 5)
Meaningful thought arises only for the whole animal
dynamically engaged with its environment, or so I
contend. (p. 8)
In kinesiology this argument means that motor
control and learning is not solely the result of the brain
and its internal models. Rather, motor control exists in
an organism within an environment. This is not a new
idea. One of the earlier proponents of this approach was
Gibson (1979), and then in a very influential paper by
Turvey (1977), who stated
it is curious that theories of perception are rarely, if
ever, constructed with reference to action. And, while
theories of perception abound, theories of action are
conspicuous by their absence. But it must necessarily
be the case that, like warp and woof, perception and
action are interwoven, and we are likely to lose per-
spective if we attend to one and neglect the other; for
it is in the manner of their union that the properties
of each are rationalized. After all, there would be
no point in perceiving if one could not act, and one
could hardly act if one could not perceive. (p. 211)
This ecological approach to action championed by
Gibson and then in the present and near past by Turvey
has oftentimes centered around the distinction between
whether there were internal models of control such as
a generalized motor program (Schmidt, 1975b) or that
internal models cannot exist (see Michaels & Carello,
1981) for this argument.
We are long past this argument. Clearly the brain
brings something to the action table, and clearly envi-
ronmental information as well as how people move to
control environmental information, such as in catching
flying baseballs (McBeath, Shaffer, & Kaiser, 1995), is
also on the action table. Kinesiology should be at the
forefront of understanding, describing, and improving
performance at the level of the performer (or student or
client) within the environment. Newell (1985a, 1985b)
understood and promoted this approach in two influen-
tial papers. Newell proposed that to understand motor
control and skill learning, the level of analyses required
us to understand what the person brings to the action
table, what the environment affords the person, and what
the task demands. It is this level of analysis, rather than
discovering what area of the brain controls a particular
movement, that needs to be our focus. To be redundant,
localization of brain function is an interesting question
and theoretically important question. I claim that it is just
not at the level of analysis for kinesiology.
A classic example that supports the Newell frame-
work comes from the work by Thelen and Fisher (1982)
on the stepping reflex in infants. Evidence is provided
that supports the notion that the appearance, disappear-
ance, and then reappearance of stepping in infants is a
result of a mismatch and then a match between the mass
and strength of the infant coupled with their neuromotor
systems. Thus, the maturational pattern is not just mir-
roring the development of brain maturation.
Teachers of motor skills know this implicitly. A Little
League baseball coach knows the necessity to convince
players to use a lighter bat because the child who uses
a big, heavy bat cannot swing the bat fast enough. Bat
speed is crucial for hitting a moving baseball at any age
and level of skill. Young bowlers use lighter bowling
balls. School-age children are provided with smaller
scissors than adults. However, in research, we conduct
studies that examine the deficiencies in motor skills in
children compared with adults when the tasks typically
are scaled to the morphology of the adult. We need to ask
questions to understand skill learning and development
on the scale of the organism of interest. This type of
issue would not be so prevalent if scholars believed and
acted on the notion that skill learning as well as motor
skill control does not reside at any privileged domain.
Furthermore, the level of analysis must be at a behavioral
level of understanding and description. That is the area
that makes kinesiology unique.

For example, Jantzen, Steinberg, and Kelso (2004)
demonstrate that control processes appear to be a result
of the environmental contextual demands. Research
participants flexed and extended their index finger in
synchrony with a metronome so that the finger reached
maximum flexion on the beat or maximum extension on
the beat. The metronome then was disengaged and the
participant continued to flex and extend at the previously
prescribed rate. Note that the movement pattern is the
same in each movement series now that the metronome
is no longer engaged. However, brain activation patterns
during this no-metronome phase were specific to whether
the participant attempted to synchronize on flexion or on
extension. How can identical movement patterns have
different internal brain representations? The point is not
to argue this issue but instead to use this excellent dem-
Downloaded by Human Kinetics kims@hkusa.com on 03/20/17, Volume 3, Article Number 1
onstration to argue that we must understand control not
solely at the level of brain activation patterns.
Another wonderful example in support of this
argument comes from the work of Mechsner, Kerzel,
Knoblich, and Prinz (2001). About 16 years earlier to their
work, Haken, Kelso, and Bunz (1985) explained behav-
ior in a bimanual finger coordination task. When index
fingers oscillated entrained by a metronome, Kelso et al.
(1985), demonstrated that an antiphase coordination (one
finger adducts while the other abducts) naturally becomes
an in-phase one (fingers adducts and adduct at the same
time) as the metronome period decreases (i.e., movement
frequency increases). This phase transition served as the
foundational finding for a dynamical analysis of move-
ment control and coordination. The original explanation
for the phase transition results rested in the biophysical
machinery of the individual. However, Mechsner et al.
(2001) showed that when one of the hands palm was down
and the other palm was up, the stability of in-phase versus
anti– phase coordination could be reversed. This palm
up–palm down task changed the perceptual affordances.
Thus, coordination depends upon the person as well as
environmental information.
A corollary finding in bimanual coordination is
that performing continuous bimanual tasks in frequency
relations between the two effectors such as 4:3 are very
difficult to perform. Mechsner et al. (2001) demonstrated
how the 4:3 task became simple and easy to coordi-
nate. Research participants made circling movements
by moving each of two handles, one with each hand.
These movements occurred below the level of the table,
such that individuals could not see their rotational
movements. On the tabletop were two flags, each
attached via a series of gears to one of the handles
being rotated by the participant. The task required the
participant to rotate the handles such that the flags on
top of the tables rotated together in a 1:1 frequency
relation. However, because of the unique gearing to each
handle-flag system, the hands had to move the handles
in a 4:3 frequency relation. This should have been hard
because when participants are instructed to perform such
a task, the task is really difficult. But, the Mechsner et
al. task was easy!
Motor Learning and Control   41
The inference is straightforward. When people move
with an environment goal that is easily comprehended,
coordination is simple. More importantly, people move
to achieve goals in their perceived environment. Rarely
are movements required for movement sake. When they
are, these tasks are very difficult. Tasks such as figure
skating and gymnastics are difficult for many reasons;
but I offer that one reason is that the goal is to achieve a
movement, whose form is specified by judges and not to
accomplish a goal in an environment.
Another good example of the approach of studying
skills within the context of the environment involves the
catching of a fly ball in baseball. Although there are dis-
cussions and disagreements about the details, the prin-
ciple is straightforward (Chapman, 1968; McBeath,
et al., 1995). It seems as though the easiest way to
understand how outfielders run to catch (intercept) a
fly ball is not by perceptually predicting the flight of
the ball. Instead, the fielder runs to control the character-
istics of the acceleration characteristics of the image of
the ball on the retina. In other words the fielder runs to
control their visual world. Dogs apparently use the same
strategy to catch a Frisbee (Shaffer, Krauchunas, Eddy,
& McBeath, 2004).
Rather than predicting our future, I argue that we
need to determine our future by deciding whether it means
something to be an academic in kinesiology. Perhaps this
is a silly concern. Engineering in universities clearly has
blurred the lines between engineering and fundamental
sciences, such as physics, mathematics, and biological
sciences. However, physicists and engineers do have
common fundamental theorems and knowledge that
drive them. Motor control and learning in kinesiology
should move away from believing the brain holds the
key to action and move out to examine the movement
of people within their environment. In other words, the
future needs to become a set of scholars using either
the Newell (1985a, 1985b) framework or a Gibsonian
(Turvey, 1977) approach. We want to understand skills
from the perspective of a person moving within an envi-
ronment that provides affordances and challenges. This
should be our motor control and learning future within
kinesiology.
I am not saying that this must be the motor control
future. But if the “our” means kinesiology, then we must
produce this future. We need to stress that the proper level
of analysis is a whole person interacting with tasks and the
environmental affordances. Understanding the relations
between these three factors and how individuals structure
movement within this framework will lead to important
understandings about the learning, performance, teach-
ing, and rehabilitation of motor skills.
In addition, I am not calling for people to change
their research programs. Fields such as physical educa-
tion, now called kinesiology or exercise science by their
very nature, have never been a fundamental discipline
like physics or mathematics. We always are intersecting
with other disciplines. Currently, in motor control, the
major intersections are in computational areas as well
 42  Zelaznik
as neuroscience. Scholars in motor control doing work
intersecting these areas are doing wonderful work on fun-
damental neuroscience of motor behavior (see Bradberry,
Gentili, & Contreras-Vidal, 2010; Vaillancourt, Sturman,
Metman, Bakay, & Corcos, 2003).
Many of the more senior scholars in kinesiology
remember the call for physical education to become an
academic discipline (Henry, 1964). However, Henry
never argued that physical education was a basic science.
He understood the proper level of analysis. Below is an
example he provides in showing the domain of exercise
physiology in physical education:
The study of the heart as an organ is physiology,
whereas determining the quantitative role of heart
action as a limiting factor in physical performance
in normal individuals is perhaps more physical
Downloaded by Human Kinetics kims@hkusa.com on 03/20/17, Volume 3, Article Number 1
education than physiology. Thus the study of
variables which cause individual differences in
performance in the normal range of individuals is
of particular concern to physical education but evi-
dently of little interest to physiology. (All of these
examples are of course borderline by intent.) (Henry,
1964, page 33)
I claim that in motor control we should use the Henry
admonition to decide what kinesiology and motor control
should study and teach and what questions should be
more of the domain of neuroscience or biological sci-
ences. Of course, neuroscience is not a pure discipline
either. If one wants to be an adherent to the approach
advocated in this paper, what are questions that would
keep motor control in the kinesiology ballpark, compared
with another ballpark.
I now provide some notions about kinesiological–
motor control questions. I make no claim that these are
the best, or the only ones. First, is the nature of perfor-
mance improvements via practice general or specific? For
example, Bahrick, Fitts, and Briggs (1957) showed that
the performance improvement function depended upon
the criterion for scoring success. Newell, Mayer-Kress,
Hong, and Liu (2009) show that the classic power law
of learning might be due to a mixing of short time scales
of performance improvement and longer time scales of
performance improvement. We do not know whether
the performance curve changes with practice exhibit
generality versus specificity. For example, Proteau (1992)
shows how performance improvements are specific to
the feedback practice conditions. This type of result has
important implications for our field. When we teach or
do rehabilitation, we desire the performance improve-
ments to be maximized in the functional environment,
not in the practice field, or the therapist office. We need
to understand the principles of specificity and generality
of practice.
We also need to understand the symbiotic nature of
perception and action. We perceive to move and move
to perceive. What are the discoverable laws? Are there
discoverable laws? A corollary question concerns the
nature of movement control in an open environment
versus a closed environment (Gentile, 1972). Schmidt
(1975b) claimed that in an unpredictable environment an
open skill was a closed skill with a variable trigger (when
to initiate the ballistic movement). Conversely, Gentile
(1972) believes that the nature of the environmental
demands for open versus closed causes these different
skills to be learned and performed in a fundamentally
different fashion. These are the level of description
issues that motor learning and control in kinesiology
should see in our future. There are many others, and I
hope that a few young scholars do not follow the cur-
rent zeitgeist and instead venture out to go back to the
future.
References
Adams, J.A. (1971). A closed loop theory of motor learning.
Journal of Motor Behavior, 3, 111–150. doi:10.1080/002
22895.1971.10734898
Bahrick, H.P., Fitts, P.M., & Briggs, G.E. (1957). Learning
curves: facts or artifacts? Psychological Bulletin, 54,
256–268. doi:10.1037/h0040313
Bradberry, T.J., Gentili, R.J., & Contreras-Vidal, J.L. (2010).
Reconstructing three-dimensional hand movements from
noninvasive electroencephalographic signals. The Journal
of Neuroscience, 30, 3432–3437. doi:10.1523/JNEURO-
SCI.6107-09.2010
Chapman, S. (1968). Catching a baseball. American Journal of
Physics, 36(10), 868–870. doi:10.1119/1.1974297
Donders, F.C. (169). On the speed of mental processes.
(W.G. Koster trans.) Acta Psychologica, 30, 412–431.
doi:10.1016/0001-6918(69)90065-1
Evarts, E.V. (1968). Relation of pyramidal tract activity to
force exerted during voluntary movement. Journal of
Neurophysiology, 31, 14–27.
Gentile, A.M. (1972). A working model of skill acquisition with
application to teaching. Quest, 17, 3–23. doi:10.1080/003
36297.1972.10519717
Georgopoulos, A.P., Schwartz, A.B., & Kettner, R.E. (1986).
Neuronal population coding of movement direction. Sci-
ence, 233, 1416–1419. doi:10.1126/science.3749885
Gibson, J.J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual percep-
tion. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Haken, H., Kelso, J.A.S., & Bunz, H. (1985). A theoretical
model of phase transitions in human hand movements.
Biological Cybernetics, 51, 347–356. doi:10.1007/
BF00336922
Henry, F.M. (1964). Physical education - an academic discipline.
Journal of Health, Physical Education and Recreation,
35, 69–70.
Jantzen, K.J., Steinberg, F.L., & Kelso, J.A.S. (2004). Brain
networks underlying human timing behavior are influenced
by prior context. Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences of the United States of America, 101(17),
6815–6820. doi:10.1073/pnas.0401300101
McBeath, M.K., Shaffer, D.M., & Kaiser, M.K. (1995).
How baseball outfielders determine where to run to
catch fly balls. Science, 268, 569–573. doi:10.1126/
science.7725104

Mechsner, F., Kerzel, D., Knoblich, G., & Prinz, W. (2001).
Perceptual basis of bimanual coordination. Nature, 414,
69–73. doi:10.1038/35102060
Michaels, C.F., & Carello, C. (1981). Direct perception. Engle-
wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Newell, K.M. (1985a). Coordination, control, and skill. In I.F.R.
Wilberg (Ed.), Differing perspectives in motor control (pp.
295–318). Amsterdam: North Holland.
Newell, K.M. (1985b). Constraints on the development of
coordination. In M.G. Wade & H.T.A. Whiting (Eds.),
Motor development in children: Aspects of coordina-
tion and control (pp. 341–360). Boston: Martinus
Nijhoff.
Newell, K.M., Mayer-Kress, G., Hong, S.L., & Liu, Y.T. (2009).
Adaptation and learning: characteristic time scales of
performance dynamics. Human Movement Science, 28,
Downloaded by Human Kinetics kims@hkusa.com on 03/20/17, Volume 3, Article Number 1
655–687. doi:10.1016/j.humov.2009.07.001
Noë, A. (2009). Out of our heads: why you are not your brain,
and other lessons from the biology of consciousness. New
York City: Hill and Wang.
Proteau, L. (1992). On the specificity of learning and the role of
visual information for movement control. In L.P.D. Elliott
(Ed.), Vision and motor control (pp. 67–103). Amsterdam:
Elsevier Science Publishers.
Rose, D.K., & Winstein, C.J. (2013). Temporal coupling is more
robust than spatial coupling: an investigation of interlimb
coordination after stroke. Journal of Motor Behavior, 45,
313–324. doi:10.1080/00222895.2013.798250
View publication stats
Motor Learning and Control   43
Salmoni, A.W., Schmidt, R.A., & Walter, C.B. (1984).
Knowledge of results and motor learning: a review and
critical reappraisal. Psychological Bulletin, 95, 355–386.
doi:10.1037/0033-2909.95.3.355
Schmidt, R.A. (1975a). Motor skills. New York: Harper Row.
Schmidt, R.A. (1975b). A schema theory of discrete motor skill
learning. Psychological Review, 82, 225–260. doi:10.1037/
h0076770
Shaffer, D.M., Krauchunas, S.M., Eddy, M., & McBeath,
M.K. (2004). How dogs navigate to catch frisbees. Psy-
chological Science, 15(7), 437–441. doi:10.1111/j.0956-
7976.2004.00698.x
Thelen, E., & Fisher, D.K. (1982). Newborn stepping: an expla-
nation for a “disappearing” reflex. Developmental Psychol-
ogy, 18, 760–775. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.18.5.760
Turvey, M.T. (1977). Preliminaries to a theory of action with
reference to vision. In R.E. Shaw & J. Bransford (Eds.),
Perceiving, acting and knowing (pp. 211–265). Hillsdale,
N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Vaillancourt, D.E., Sturman, M.M., Metman, L.V., Bakay,
R.A.E., & Corcos, D.M. (2003). Deep brain stimulation
of the VIM thalamic nucleus modifies several features of
essential tremor. Neurology, 61, 919–925. doi:10.1212/01.
WNL.0000086371.78447.D2
Velliste, M., Perel, S., Spalding, M.C., Whitford, A.S., &
Schwartz, A.B. (2008). Cortical control of a prosthetic arm
for self-feeding. Nature, 453, 1098–1101. doi:10.1038/
nature06996