Journal of Motor Behavior, Vol. 53, No.
6, 2021
# Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
REVIEW ARTICLE
Collective Variables and Task Constraints in Movement
Coordination, Control and Skill
Karl M. Newell1, Yeou-Teh Liu2
1
Department of Kinesiology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA. 2Department of Athletic Performance, National
Taiwan Normal University, Taipei 116, Taiwan.
ABSTRACT. In this paper we review studies that have identi-
fied collective variables (order parameters) in movement coord-
ination, control and skill with emphasis on whole-body
multiple joint degree of freedom (DF) tasks. Collective varia-
bles of a dynamical system have been proposed formally and
informally from a diverse set of perceptual-motor tasks, from
which we emphasize: bimanual coordination, locomotion (ped-
alo, walking, running, bicycle riding), roller ball task, static
(quiet standing) and dynamic (moving on a ski-simulator) bal-
ance, grasping, and juggling. Several types of candidate collect-
ive variables have been identified, including: relative phase,
frequency ratio, number of hands active in grasping, synchrony,
learning rate and relative timing. There is a strong influence of
the task goal in determining the collective variable that can be
body or environment relative. The emergence of the task rele-
vant collective variable is typically in the early stage of skill
learning where subjects through practice adapt movement
organization to realize a never previously produced movement
coordination pattern. Throughout, the paper elaborates on open
theoretical, experimental and analysis issues for collective vari-
ables in the context of task constraints and Bernstein’s (1967)
view of skill acquisition as learning to master redundant DF.
KEYWORDS: Coordination, degrees of freedom, degeneracy,
whole body actions, movement, posture, learning, early stage
of learning, motor tasks, PCA
Introduction
he introduction of Bernstein’s (1967, 1996) writings
T into the western world provided a new biophysical
framework of theorizing about motor control and skill
acquisition that contrasted sharply with the then develop-
ing cognitive/representation accounts of movement and
skill (Adams, 1971; Fitts, 1964; Keele, 1968; Schmidt,
1975). A central feature of Bernstein’s agenda was the
challenge of how the many DF of the hierarchical system
at different levels of analysis (tonus, synergies, space
and action) are harnessed to produce coordinated and
skilled (dexterous) movement in action. Indeed, for
Bernstein (1967, p. 127), the problem of motor skill
acquisition is the mastery of redundant DF.
Turvey et al. (1978) elaborated on Bernstein’s DF
problem by outlining estimates of the number of DF of
the perceptual-motor system: a number that rapidly
increases as one moves consideration from the macro
level of behavior and joint motions to the more micro
levels, respectively, of muscles, motor units and neurons.
Their theorizing pointed up the logical and material
770
challenges that the DF problem held for the prevailing
representational accounts of motor control and skill
acquisition (engram, motor program, plan, schema). In
our view, Bernstein’s problem remains fundamental and
open today even if one considers as Latash (2012) has
that there are positive even blissful outcomes from a sys-
tem with many DF, that include the facilitation of com-
pensatory behavior (see also Lipsitz, 2002; Newell &
Vaillancourt, 2001; Huys et al., 2014 on the adaptive use
of multiple DF).
The coordination and control of DF became a depart-
ure point for the introduction of a self-organization the-
ory of movement coordination (Kugler et al., 1980;
Kugler & Turvey, 1987) “with minimal recourse to an
intelligent regulator”. The umbrella construct of self-
organization provided a natural basis for implementation
of the principles and tools of nonlinear dynamics to the
analysis of movement coordination and control. The
foundation of this approach, now known as coordination
dynamics (Kelso, 2009), was the experimental findings
on phase transitions in bimanual finger (Kelso, 1981)
and hand (Kelso, 1984) coordination, and the subsequent
creation of the HKB (Haken et al., 1985) model based
on Haken’s (1983) self-organization theory of synergetics
in physical systems.
Indeed, the role of relative phase as the collective vari-
able in HKB and the evolving principles of coordination
dynamics formed originally on the bases of within-per-
son movement of fingers, hands, arms and legs have
been shown to generalize to between-person and between
stimuli (auditory, visual, haptic) under a variety of rhyth-
mic movement settings (Fuchs & Kelso, 2018). At the
same time, there has been a broadening of the coordin-
ation dynamics framework to the learning and perform-
ance of tasks other than the bimanual 2 DF protocol.
The mapping of brain dynamics to the movement coord-
ination dynamics has also become a research emphasis.
Our review is centered to the theoretical, experimental
and analytical developments of studies of collective
variables (order parameters) in movement coordination,
control and skill and the learning and performance of
whole-body multiple joint DF tasks. It will be evident
Correspondence address: Yeou-Teh Liu Department of
Athletic Performance, National Taiwan Normal University, 88,
Ting-Zhou Road Section 4, Taipei 116, Taiwan. Email:
yeouteh@ntnu.edu.tw

that there have been several research emphases to the
investigations of collective variables in motor learning
and control: including formal dynamical systems model
construction, tests of macro level variables in coordin-
ation dynamics, together with formal and informal identi-
fication of the collective variable for a given task.
Collective Variables in Movement Theory
and Experiment
Essential Variables, Order Parameters and
Collective Variables
Bernstein (1967, 1996) considered coordination to
reflect an activity that guarantees that a movement has
homogeneity, integration and structural unity. The appli-
cation of systems’ approaches to human movement has
facilitated the integrated analysis of the qualitative and
quantitative dynamics and the decomposition of the role
of system variables in motor control. There is a small set
of related strands of theoretical influence to the deter-
mination of the variables that organize the macroscopic
dynamics of human movement.
Kugler et al. (1980) originally drew on the complex
system formulations of Gel’fand and Tsetlin (1962) to
decompose the system variables into those that are essen-
tial and those that are nonessential. In this view, the
essential variables determine the qualitative properties of
the coordination pattern (as reflected in the relational
variables of coordination – Turvey, 1990), whereas the
nonessential variables produce changes in the scalar val-
ues of the function. In essence, Kugler et al. (1980) pro-
vided an embedded account of the emergent properties
of coordination, control and skill (Newell, 1985).
Coordination is the function that constrains the poten-
tially free variables into a behavioral unit. Control is the
process by which values are assigned to the variables in
the function (i.e., parameterizing the function). Skill
reflects the approximation of optimal values be assigned
to the controlled variables.
The HKB (1985) model applied the construct of an
order parameter to movement coordination and control
that was expressed in the stability and instability of
bimanual relative phase (see Haken, 1996 for more back-
ground and detail on the order parameter construct).
Relative phase is a coordination variable in that it cap-
tures the space-time coupling between the motion of the
individual component DF (e.g., index fingers) and
reflects the macroscopic organization of the bimanual
task. The notion of an order parameter as a macroscopic
variable has its origins in physics and the transitions
between solids, liquids, and gases where it has been
expressed as a measure of the degree of order across the
boundaries in a far from equilibrium system. The effi-
cacy of the order parameter construct depends on formal-
izing the relevant microscopic and macroscopic levels of
2021, Vol. 53, No. 6
Collective Variables
analysis and quantifying the qualitative macroscopic
movement forms of the system at hand (Haken, 1996).
The construct of a collective variable has also been
used in the motor control domain as a synonymous term
to that of an order parameter (Sch€oner & Kelso, 1988a,
1988b, 1988c). Like an order parameter, the construct of
collective variable originated in physics but has taken on
subtle variations of interpretation according to the discip-
line of inquiry. Mitra et al. (1998) defined a collective
variable in the movement domain as one that captures, in
unitary fashion, the pattern of coordination and its spe-
cific spatial and temporal details (see also Turvey, 2004).
It has been conjectured that the collective variable is
unlikely to be a basic variable of biomechanics but rather
an abstract relational (informational) variable specific to
the coordination for the action in question (Kelso, 1994;
Mitra et al., 1998). Kelso (2009) through the develop-
ment of coordination dynamics interpreted collective var-
iables generally as relational quantities that are created
by the cooperation of the individual parts of the system
(see also Kelso & Fuchs, 2016).
Collective variables have been hypothesized by Mitra
et al. (1998) to reflect the topological structure formed in
the early coordination stage of skill acquisition that has
long been loosely interpreted, without experimental
examination, as a cognitive stage focused on ‘getting the
idea’ of the task (Fitts, 1964; Gentile, 1972). From a
dynamical viewpoint, however, the participant in the
early stage of learning is searching directly or indirectly
through practice to realize the task goal and relevant
movement pattern of the coordination dynamics as cap-
tured in the emergence of the collective variable at the
macroscopic level (Liu et al., 2019).
There may be a need for more than one collective
variable to adequately capture the global structure of a
system (Haken, 1983). In the perceptual-motor skill
domain this proposition seems particularly relevant for
so-called whole-body multiple DF tasks. To date, how-
ever, the respective claims from papers are all one as to
the number of collective variables, except for the 2-order
parameter model of Frank et al. (2009) for one and two
hand grasping and the PCA analysis of walking and run-
ning (Lamoth et al., 2009) that are discussed later in the
paper. Thus, in certain perceptual-motor skills we may
be searching for collective variables, though still a low
dimensional solution (emphasis 1 to 3 collect-
ive variables).
Bernstein (1967) considered skill as the mastery of
redundant DF and focused on the potential planar and
range of motions of the component joint DF. In contrast,
in coordination dynamics the emphasis has been on the
dynamical or functional DF of the attractor dynamics
rather than the configuration of joint space. The number
of dynamical DF will typically be smaller than the num-
ber of joint DF engaged in the action (Kay, 1988; Kay
771
K. M. Newell & Y.-T. Liu
et al., 1991). This distinction also allows the DF of the
component joint space (elements) to retain their integer
whole number status while the functional DF of the
attractor dynamics can take on partial numbers reflecting
its fractal dimension (Newell & Vaillancourt, 2001).
Presently, the terms essential variable, order parameter
and collective variable are used interchangeably in the
movement domain. We adhere to using the term collect-
ive variable in the remainder of this paper.
Task Influence on the Embedding of Coordination,
Control and Skill
The constructs of coordination, control and skill offer
a framework for the categorization and decomposition of
a particular class of motor tasks. There have been mul-
tiple theoretical and practical efforts to categorize motor
skills ostensibly for the purposes of understanding the
generalization of motor learning and control across tasks
(e.g., Fleishman et al., 1984; Gentile, 1987; Poulton,
1957; Schmidt & Lee, 2012; Warren, 2006 – see Magill
& Anderson, 2014 Chapter 1 for an overview).
Nevertheless, task categorization frameworks have been
largely descriptive and not directly relevant for a dynam-
ical coordination perspective.
In motor learning, we can view coordination tasks as
those that require directly or indirectly the learning of a
new coordination pattern as defined by a relational prop-
erty of movement dynamics not previously realized by
the participant (Kugler et al., 1980; Newell, 1985;
Saltzman & Kelso, 1987; Turvey, 1990). Scaling tasks
are those that require a different parameterization to a
learned coordination function that the individual can
already produce – as, for example, in the related but dif-
ferent assumptions of schema theory on generalization
within a movement class (Schmidt, 1975). The majority
of motor learning and control research has focused on
the scaling of an already formed movement coordination
pattern and a collective variable has not typically been
hypothesized or sought.
The task types reflect the embedded processes of
coordination, control, and skill that are constrained by
the task goal in conjunction with the individual and
environmental constraints (Newell, 1986) that collect-
ively may specify directly or indirectly the respective
variables for a solution of the coordination function. This
background is relevant because recent studies have
shown theoretically and experimentally that the function
of learning is different for the fixed-point attractor
dynamic tasks of movement scaling (Newell et al., 2001,
2006; Newell, Liu, et al., 2009; Newell, Mayer-Kress,
et al., 2009) than for those tasks that induce transitions
(Liu et al., 2006, 2010; Liu et al., 2012). In a related
approach, Kostrubiec, Zanone, Fuchs, and Kelso (2012)
have shown that the rate of change (drift or shift) in
learning a new pattern of coordination is dependent on
772
the individual movement repertoire prior to learning the
new task (Zanone & Kelso, 1992, 1997).
Warren (2006) within the ecological theory of percep-
tion and action has proposed task categories that are
based on the stability and in-stability of the movement
dynamics. The task categorization framework hinges on
the relative contribution of physical constraints and infor-
mational constraints to the control of the task. Three
classes of perceptual-motor tasks were identified. One is
stabilizing a passively stable system such as in bouncing
a ball on a racket (Sternad et al., 2001). In this task type,
the physics of the context dominates control of the action
and the coordination solution is found through percep-
tual-motor search strategies. A second categorization is
active stabilization of an unstable system, such as in bal-
ancing a pole (Foo et al., 2000). In this task category
there is strong contribution of both physical and informa-
tional constraints for a successful task outcome. Third,
and finally, there is the active stabilization of a neutrally
stable system, such as in braking while driving a car.
Motor learning and control in this task category is domi-
nated by task relevant information and, in our view, has
generally (though unwittingly) been the task category of
choice in the study of perceptual-motor skills.
The learning of representative motor tasks from the 3
model categories of Warren (2006) is likely to induce
different functions of change in the dynamics of learning
(Newell et al., 2001). The relation between task catego-
ries, attractor dynamics and behavioral change still has
many open issues, however, including the hypothesized
reciprocal (or circular) causality of the collective variable
with the motions of the individual DF (Kelso, 1995).
Thus, in spite of the general recognition of the role of
task constraints in motor learning and control the formal
link to the dynamics of behavior beyond the 2 DF of
bimanual control, is still in its early stages. Nevertheless,
the dynamical systems approach to task decomposition
provides a framework to model task dynamics within the
coordination, control and skill perspective (Beek & van
Santvoord, 1992; Newell, 1986; Newell et al., 2001;
Saltzman & Kelso, 1987).
Ecological Theory of Perception and Action
The perception/action links between Gibson’s (1979)
theory of direct perception and Bernstein’s (1967) bio-
physical account of movement provided the beginnings
of the ecological theory of perception and action (Turvey
& Kugler, 1984; Turvey, 1992; Turvey et al., 1981).
From this background, there has been rich theoretical
and experimental development to many aspects of move-
ment (Haken et al., 1985; Kelso, 1995; Sch€oner &
Kelso, 1988c; Turvey, 1990) and perception (Lee, 2009;
Profeta & Turvey, 2018; Turvey, 1992, 2004; Warren,
2006) in action. Indeed, in the theory of ecological
psychology, perception and action are complementary
Journal of Motor Behavior

constructs to the extent that it is difficult to investigate
them independently in the perception-action cycle
(Gibson, 1979; Profeta & Turvey, 2018; Kugler &
Turvey, 1987; Warren, 2006). Historically, nevertheless,
theories of perception and action have been largely inde-
pendent and many factors have led to what Turvey
(2004) called ‘the great divide’ of perception and action.
Sch€
oner and Kelso (1988a, 1988b, 1988c) in early
papers from the evolving domain of coordination dynam-
ics proposed a dynamic that was continuous in its formu-
lation of perception and action as in a M€obius band
(Turvey, 2004). A significant feature for the theme of
this paper is that it brings the constructs of perception
and action together under the constraint of the collective
variable (f). The proposed dynamic from Sch€ oner and
Kelso (1988c) is:

constraints (Newell, 1985, 1986) play an important role
f_ ¼ L f, ci (1)
where the temporal change of the collective variable is a
function of the variable itself subject to both specific and
nonspecific parameter influences, ci. The collective vari-
able f reflects the abstract but coherent relations among
the parts and processes of the system and is context
dependent. Kelso and Fuchs (2016) have proposed a
coordination dynamics model of baby – environment
coupling in the learning of the Rovee-Collier mobile
contingent reinforcement task.
The emphasis in the ecological framework of princi-
ples from Gibson’s (1979) theory of direct perception
leads to the position that assessing collective variables in
actions generally will need to consider not only move-
ment relative to the body, as in the HKB model, but also
to the environment (Turvey, 1992, 2004; Warren, 2006).
In other words, the collective variable will need to cap-
ture movement coordination of the participant to proper-
ties of the environment in the context of the task
demands (Newell, 1986). Moreover, the collective vari-
able for some perceptual-motor tasks will not necessarily
be based directly on the neuromuscular or component
joint motion DF, that have long been viewed in biomech-
anics and movement physiology as the foundational
dimensions of analysis for motor control.
In this context, it is relevant that Bernstein’s (1996)
anatomically based hierarchy of control in action had 4
inter-related levels of organization: namely, tonus, syn-
ergy, space and action (see Profeta & Turvey, 2018 for
an ecological psychology contemporary view on
Bernstein’s levels of control). This framework has been
revised in Bernstein (1947/in press) to 5 levels adding at
the top of the hierarchy - symbolic coordinations.
Different task emphases in movement coordination and
control, however, can change the relative influence of
levels in the hierarchy and, in particular the level of con-
trol that is leading momentarily the system organization.
In effect, Bernstein brought task constraints into his
2021, Vol. 53, No. 6
Collective Variables
theory of movement and action by interpreting coordin-
ation and control in the 5 task categories from a multiple
levels of construction perspective of brain-behavior
organization.
Indeed, in this view certain kinds of tasks are con-
trolled at the level of space, for example, in catching a
fly baseball (Fink et al., 2009; Zaal & Michaels, 2003),
the neuromuscular synergies of leg motions will be con-
strained to a background role rather than a leading role
in the hierarchy of control. That the Bernstein (1996,
1947/in press) levels of space and action can take on a
more leading role according to the environmental and
task demands (Profeta & Turvey, 2018) is a proposition
consistent with the perceptual theory of Gibson (1979),
but has received little experimental investigation. This
line of theorizing also supports the position that task
in determining the relevant collective variable. In prin-
ciple, however, task constraints are not synonymous with
collective variables, though as we amplify later in the
paper they could be in the special circumstances of
some tasks.
The ecological theory of perception and action
together with the related domain of coordination dynam-
ics has provided a foundation for a dynamical systems
account of motor learning (Beek, 1989; Huys et al.,
2004a, 2004b; Fowler & Turvey, 1978; Sch€oner &
Kelso, 1988a, 1988b; Sch€oner et al., 1992; Mitra et al.,
1998; Newell, 1985; Newell et al., 2001; Sch€oner, 1989;
Zanone & Kelso, 1992) and development (Adolph &
Hoch, 2019; Kugler, 1986; Kugler et al., 1982; Newell,
1986; Thelen et al., 1987; Thelen & Smith, 1994; Thelen
& Ulrich, 1991). Central to this effort is a coherent
framework in the form of time scales to investigate the
various processes of change over time associated with
motor learning and motor development (Newell et al.,
2001). The more recent research in these areas has
extended the common dynamical ground of change proc-
esses in motor learning and development to a lifespan
view of the dynamics of movement development (Newell
& Liu, 2014; Newell & Morrison, 2016).
The HKB (1985) Model of Bimanual Coordination
The HKB (1985) model was developed based on the
novel experimental findings of Kelso in the bimanual
coordination of rhythmic horizontal index finger (Kelso,
1981) and hand (Kelso, 1984) movements. The essence
of the experiments was similar with a metronome pacing
the two fingers or two hands to oscillate initially at an
in-phase or anti-phase pattern with the frequency being
increased every few seconds from 1.25 Hz up to 3.5 Hz
in small steps for the finger protocol and from 1-5 Hz in
the hand experiment. The instructions to subjects empha-
sized maintaining one full cycle of motion for each beat
of the metronome. And, that should they feel that the
773
K. M. Newell & Y.-T. Liu
finger or hand movement pattern may change, subjects
should not prevent it from doing so but rather adopt the
most comfortable pattern in preserving the beat.
The experiments revealed four key phenomena that
were the basis for determining the equation structure of
the HKB model (Haken et al., 1985). First, there are
only two stable bimanual coordination patterns between
the fingers and also between the hands – anti-phase and
in-phase. Second, there is an abrupt transition from anti-
phase to in-phase at a critical frequency. Third, beyond
the transition frequency only the in-phase condition is
stable. Fourth, when the oscillation frequency is reduced
the initially prepared anti-phase condition does not return
to an anti-phase pattern.
A central factor for designating relative phase as the
collective variable was that participants stably repro-
duced the in-phase and anti-phase conditions under low
frequency initial conditions but when the frequency was
scaled up to a critical point the anti-phase condition tran-
sitioned to in-phase. In contrast, when the initial condi-
tion was in-phase it was preserved over the full
frequency range for that coordination pattern. The quali-
tative asymmetrical transition in the candidate collective
variable from anti-phase to in-phase (and not vice-versa)
as a function of control parameter frequency provides
strong evidence, to supplement the theoretical rationale,
that relative phase is the collective variable for this
bimanual system.
The experimental transition presaged the creation of a
formal experimental strategy for determining the collect-
ive variable for a given perceptual-motor skill. As theor-
etical rationale, HKB were influenced by the finding in
many physical systems that phase is an accurate reflec-
tion of the cooperativity among the system components.
This observation also relates to a principle from the the-
ory of synergetics (Haken, 1996) that the configuration
of the subsystems specifies their phase, and conversely,
that the phase variable specifies the spatial-temporal
ordering of the components (a relation labeled reciprocal
causality – Kelso, 1994, 1995). Another influential
observation in arriving at the position of relative phase
as the collective variable for bimanual tasks was that
phase remains invariant across transformations of many
motor activities. This phenomenon is consistent with the
principle that the collective variable tends to change
more slowly than the individual components to the influ-
ence of control parameters. Moreover, non-linear coupled
oscillator models fit well with relative phase as the col-
lective variable.
The HKB model provides for potentially two stable
relative phase regimens (in-phase and anti-phase)
depending on frequency that forms the landscape of the
intrinsic dynamics of the collective variable.
Furthermore, the stochastic version of the model
(Sch€oner et al., 1986) predicts enhanced fluctuations
774
FIGURE 1. Landscape view of the attractor dynamics
arising from the bimanual HKB model (Haken
et al., 1985).
preceding the transition, in addition to evidence of hys-
teresis, both indices of a nonlinear dynamical system.
Equation (2) reflects the potential landscape of the stabil-
ity/instability of the collective variable shown in Figure 1:
V ð/Þ ¼ acosð/Þ  bcosð2/Þ (2)
where V is the potential function, / is the relative phase
between the fingers and the ratio of b/a is related to the
frequency of finger oscillation.
The bimanual task with two joint DF provides a con-
trolled but restricted context to determine the collective
variable but this operational benefit in turn limits the
generality of the dynamical analysis in the context of
Bernstein’s (1967) proposition of skill acquisition being
the mastery of redundant DF. In the experiments of
Kelso (1981, Kelso, 1984) the task is a body relative
skill with the collective variable of relative phase of the
bimanual effectors that also is the task goal and the
bimanual synergy for the task (Liu et al., 2019). The
linking of relative phase to the goal of the task is, how-
ever, an inference because relative phase is not men-
tioned directly in the instructions to subjects. Indeed,
what the subjects perceive as the goal in this task and
motor skill tasks more generally is an understudied prob-
lem in spite of the prevalence of oral instructions in
laboratory experiments and, moreover, in clinical practice
by change agents in the contexts of teaching, coaching
and therapeutics.
These experimental constraints give emphasis to the
role of the intrinsic dynamics in the coordination task
(Sch€oner & Kelso, 1988a, 1988b). However, they restrict
in a number of ways the possible mappings between the
variable(s) reflecting the task goal, the bimanual neuro-
muscular coordination synergy and the collective variable
that affords degenerate coordination solutions evident in
Journal of Motor Behavior

many perceptual-motor skills. Indeed, task decomposition
has revealed the potential of several layers of structure in
the movement dynamics and outcome each with their
own time scale (Beek & van Santvoord, 1992; Huys
et al., 2004a; Newell et al., 2001) to the extent that the
distinction of task goals/constraints and the candidate
collective variable can be difficult to determine.
The HKB (1985) model of bimanual coordination
introduced the relative phase between the oscillatory
horizontal movements of the two index fingers as the
order parameter that reflected the macroscopic organiza-
tion of the coordination solution in terms of its stability/
instability (see also Kelso, 1990). The oscillation fre-
quency of the fingers was used as the control parameter
that moved the system through stable/unstable regions of
state-space including at a critical frequency inducing in
the anti-phase preparation condition a transition to in-
phase. Since then there have been many experimental
tests of features of the HKB model (e.g., Fuchs & Jirsa,
2008; Jirsa & Kelso, 2004; Kelso, 1995, 2009; Molenaar
& Newell, 2003) and experimental extensions (e.g.,
visuo-motor tracking – Wimmers et al., 1992; isometric
force tracking, Lafe et al., 2016).
The HKB model has also led to several theoretical
elaborations (e.g., stochastic - Sch€oner et al., 1986; sym-
metry breaking – Kelso & Jeka, 1992; oscillators with
different eigenfrequencies – Fuchs et al., 1996; multifre-
quency tapping – Haken et al., 1996). And, by extending
the tenets of coordination dynamics, Huys et al. (2014)
developed a framework for the analysis of sequential
motor behavior (e.g., handwriting) based on the con-
structs of structured flows on manifolds and units of
behavior. These theoretical and experimental contribu-
tions, including the role of relative phase as a collective
variable, have contributed to solidifying and extending
the scope of HKB and coordination dynamics.
A more recent focus of coordination dynamics has
been social coordination between people (Zhang et al.,
2018; Zhang et al., 2019). The coordination dynamics of
HKB has typically drawn on coupled nonlinear oscillator
models where the number of oscillators is N ¼ 2 given
the bimanual task. At the other extreme are models of
populations of individual oscillators where the number
of oscillators can be quite large, for example, in swarms
of fireflies and fish. In a novel protocol dubbed the
‘human firefly’ experiment Zhang et al. (2018, 2019)
had subjects engage in a midscale social coordination
protocol in an ensemble (N ¼ 8) group. The subjects
could not see each other but they could see the flash
from their own tap and that of other group members.
The tapping task was done under regimens of varying
frequencies and continuation tapping segments without
the stimulus. Quantitative changes (diversity) in fre-
quency led to qualitative changes in coordination with a
2021, Vol. 53, No. 6
Collective Variables
critical value separating regimens of integration and sep-
aration between groups.
The modeling of the data contrasted the extended
HKB model with the longstanding large-scale model of
Kuramoto (1984). The outcome was that the resultant
integrative model that captures all key experimental
observations happens to also connect theories of small-
and large-scale biological coordination in a single math-
ematical formulation. This study shows not only the
generalization of HKB to social communication but the
core place of the extended version of HKB and relative
phase in biological coordination.
Coordination dynamics has elaborated the synergetic
pattern formation framework from motor control into the
broader but complementary consideration of the self-
organization of brain and behavior (Haken, 1996; Kelso,
1995, Kelso, 2012; Kelso & Engstrom, 2006). The cen-
tral thesis of the brain-movement-behavior program is
that “the brain is fundamentally a pattern forming self-
organized system governed by potentially discoverable
nonlinear dynamical laws” (Kelso, 1995, p. 257). The
theoretical and experimental approach, as in motor con-
trol, is mesoscopic or macroscopic depending on the
brain recording apparatus with the emphasis on pattern
formation of brain cell assemblies, transitions between
states, and how macro states of the brain emerge out of
cooperative processes.
A series of brain-behavior experiments on phase tran-
sitions has shown that the experimental search strategy
for the emergent collective variable(s) of a brain cell
assembly and its transition in principle follows the same
pathway of change as discussed previously seeking the
dynamical principles of behavioral motor control (see
Appendix A). A strength of the experiments is that they
build from previous and substantial experimental work in
the behavioral manipulations thus inspiring confidence in
the expected behavioral outcomes and associated brain
activity. The major question in initial work was whether
the relative phase profile of brain activity would match
that of the behavioral data in a single finger syncopation
task (Kelso, 1997). The initial stimulus tone started at
1 Hz increasing every 10 tones in small steps.
Using Squid (superconducting quantum interference
device) Technology for measurement of brain activity it
was found that there was a spontaneous transition in
coordination that occurred at the same critical frequency
in both motor behavior and brain signals (Jirsa et al.,
Kelso, 1994; Kelso, 1995). There is a critical frequency
where subjects cannot sustain the syncopation that leads
to a transition to synchronize with the stimulus.
Moreover, there was a strong relation in a low dimen-
sional frame of reference between the macroscopic ana-
lysis of the brain activity and that of the movement
profile. The role of both anticipation processes and sen-
sorimotor coordination was evident in the simple
775
K. M. Newell & Y.-T. Liu
experimental protocol. These findings support the inter-
pretation that the coherence of both brain and behavior
signals can be captured by the same collective variable,
namely, relative phase and, that there is an isomorphism
between brain and behavior events that cuts across the
fact that different things are being coordinated (Kelso,
1995, 1997). Fuchs and Kelso (2018) provide an over-
view of relative phase as the collective variable in a
number of experimental task protocols, including an indi-
vidual ballet dance sequence.
Collective Variables Beyond the HKB Model
As noted previously, there could be more than one, if
not several macroscopic variables, that are candidate col-
lective variables for a given perceptual-motor skill. The
challenge is to isolate a candidate collective variable or
variables, evaluate validity for the respective function
and distinguish it (as appropriate) from the component
and synergy variables in realizing a given task outcome.
This can be achieved formally through the theoretical
and experimental principles of coordination dynamics
(Kelso, 1995, Kelso, 2009). Or it can be pursued infor-
mally by the experimenter via an ‘ansatz’ as to the col-
lective variable for a given task. It is probable that these
informal and formal approaches can and do work
together where the informal strategy provides a first pass
hypothesis (conjectured relation between an independent
variable and a dependent variable) that can be put subse-
quently to more formal experimental test. Theory, of
course, also provides the operational motivation for
hypothesis testing.
Informal
The informal strategy has the experimenter make an
‘ansatz’ of a macroscopic property that may reflect the
collective variable for the task. It follows that one also
interprets the data through this working assumption with-
out necessarily any validity checks that the experimental
tests support a particular macroscopic property as the
collective variable. This can be limiting or even prob-
lematic because identifying a macroscopic variable for
the system dynamics is a necessary but not sufficient
means to determining a collective variable in a dynam-
ical systems framework. In other words, the identified
macroscopic variable can by definition be macroscopic
but it may not be the actual collective variable for the
task at hand.
Formal
The formal identification of the collective variable(s)
for a task requires a substantial experimental effort
guided by the theoretical modeling of dynamical sys-
tems. Sch€oner et al. (1992) and Kelso (1995) have pro-
vided a set of procedures for the identification process of
the collective variable. A precis of the experimental
776
strategy that has been implemented and operationalized
most fully in Kelso (1984) may be found in
Appendix A.
In spite of this explicit experimental strategy, there
has been modest generalization of the construct of a col-
lective variable from HKB to other motor tasks. One rea-
son for this we conjecture is that the identification of the
collective variable for tasks with multiple redundant joint
space DF is not such a straightforward enterprise as the
determination of relative phase of 2 DF in the restricted
2 planar finger motions of the bimanual task (Haken,
1996). Even contemplating an ‘ansatz’ in some tasks is a
challenge. Moreover, actions that engage multiple joint
space DF are more likely to have a larger pool of candi-
date collective variables. Laboratory tasks still tend to be
informationally impoverished and motorically restricted
leaving them poorly placed or in the extreme case unable
to approach conditions to investigate Bernstein’s (1967)
position of the centrality of the redundant DF problem to
motor skill acquisition.
Relative Phase
Although the HKB model continues to hold its rele-
vance and robustness there is no a priori reason to
assume that a particular relative phase will necessarily be
the collective variable of the perceptual-motor system of
interest. On the other hand, as Kelso (1995, p. 52) indi-
cated, relative phase has the virtue of being a single vari-
able that captures not only the observed movement
pattern but also transitions between them. And, in this
view only the phase relation appeared to fulfill these
requirements for the collective variable as outlined in
Haken et al. (1985). This observation may turn out to be
task specific in the sense that to date it fits well with
nonlinear coupled oscillator models of rhymical move-
ment but it may be less relevant in other task categories,
such as discrete arm movements in prehensile tasks (see
forthcoming section on grasping).
However, even if one pursues a relative phase as the
collective variable in the multivariate DF action context
one is still left with the question of which relative phase
– that is, how does one know the right one? This ques-
tion is relevant because in whole body actions such as
quiet standing with many joint space DF engaged there
are likely to be several possible relative phases of move-
ment kinematics that could be considered as a macro-
scopic variable (Bardy et al., 1999; Kilby et al., 2015).
The relative phase (collective variable) of the two fin-
ger motions in HKB (Haken et al., 1985) is that of a
body relative coordination property. Indeed, the classic 2
DF bimanual protocol of the HKB model is a closed
skill (Poulton, 1957) except for the change in frequency
conditions, and the initial trial conditions of the move-
ment pattern (anti-phase or in-phase) are in essence the
goals of the task. The limited component DF of two
Journal of Motor Behavior

bimanual finger motions reduces the options on a candi-
date collective variable but it also leads to the circum-
stance that the task goal can be redundant with the
synergy relation and collective variable between the
bimanual effectors.
Many perceptual-motor skills are, however, open skills
organized with respect to their relation to the environ-
ment (Poulton, 1957), that has varying degrees of unpre-
dictability. The ecological theory of perception and
action holds that there is an individual-environment rela-
tive coordination property that captures the collective
variable of the task (Turvey, 1992, 2004; Warren, 2006).
And, in parallel to the ecological framework, for this set
of constraints to action, the spatial-environmental
demands of the task can become the leading level of
control in Bernstein’s (1996) hierarchy. Moreover, in this
situation the task goal and the neuromuscular synergy
motions will typically be distinct from that of the collect-
ive variable, because the mapping between these action
frames of reference is not necessarily direct.
Principal Component Analysis (PCA)
The linear multivariate statistic of principal component
analysis (PCA) has been used as a formal strategy to
compress the number of variables in a movement ana-
lysis (Daffertshofer et al., 2004; Forner-Cordero et al.,
2005). Of additional relevance here is that PCA can also
act in a complementary way to revealing features of
coordination dynamics that inform about the macroscopic
variable(s) of a movement system including those with
many DF (Daffertshofer et al., 2004; Haken, 1996; Witte
et al., 2009). Principal component analysis, also known
as the Karhunen-Loeve (KL) expansion, or singular
value decomposition, has been used extensively to deter-
mine low dimension spatial patterns to brain and move-
ment time series (e.g., Jirsa et al., 1998). One can also
run PCA directly in the frequency domain as opposed to
the time domain (Molenaar et al., 2013).
With the PCA technique, the many variables of input
to the analysis (e.g., joint motions) can be compressed
into lower dimensional independent components that
reflect the variance of a linear combination of the input
variables with maximal variance accounted for. In this
approach, the number of components and their variance
accounted for provide information as to the nature of the
system organization (dimension and weighting of each
variable to the component collective). It also provides a
basis for constructing the projection of the components
into a dynamical frame of reference and potentially
evaluate in terms of relative phase or some other dynam-
ical variable (Daffertshofer et al., 2004; Lamoth et al.,
2009). The strengths and limitations of this approach to
deriving relative phase from the PCA remain, however,
to be evaluated.
2021, Vol. 53, No. 6
Collective Variables
As a consequence, it is useful to heed that the statistic-
ally derived principal components are not necessarily the
same as the collective variables that are identified from
the dynamics of physical systems, such as relative phase
in the HKB model. In PCA the experimenter is, in effect,
letting the statistics on the variance and covariance of
the dependent variables run their course to determine
post hoc the number and nature of the independent prin-
cipal components. In the dynamical systems framework
by comparison, the candidate collective variable is con-
jectured a priori through theoretically based task decom-
position and determined by subsequent dynamical tests.
The uncontrolled manifold (UCM – Scholz & Sch€oner,
1999) follows this dynamical approach but, in addition,
links a priori a relevant restricted task space of stability
to analyze the contributions of the joint motions.
Haas et al. (1995) used PCA to determine the number
of components as a function of skill level in the pedalo
locomotion task (see also Haken, 1996). It was shown
that, under the single step cycle approach to analysis
rather than the more typical gait time series over many
step cycles, that only one component was required with
a ‘relatively’ skilled performer to characterize the per-
formance. This implies, in effect, that all the torso and
limb motions were highly synchronous in performing
the task. The data on the pedalo task also showed that
the number of components reduced with practice and the
enhancement of skill.
In contrast, Chen et al. (2005) found that 3–5 compo-
nents were required by individuals to capture 90% of the
performance variance in the pedalo task. There were
probably many differences in the experimental set-ups of
Haas et al. (1995) and Chen et al. (2005) including skill
level of the participants. Moreover, there are a consider-
able number of analytic decisions involved in executing
and interpreting a PCA (Daffertshofer et al., 2004;
Molenaar et al., 2013), including the possibility that the
divergent findings arise from one study using the correl-
ation matrix and the other study the co-variance matrix.1
The net outcome is that the determination of the col-
lective variable(s) is or can look rather different in the
relative phase and PCA approaches to a given task. The
relative phase approach whether formal or informal has
to date provided a single variable as the collective vari-
able. With PCA one derives a number of independent
components that are a linear combination of the variance
accounted for by the input variables. In most cases, the
single variable relative phase approach will tend to be
easier to interpret than the PCA component strategy
(Forner-Cordero et al., 2005) but it may be a simplifica-
tion that over compresses the contribution of relevant
variables. On the other hand, the intuitive hypothesis of
the collective variable may be the relevant simplification
for determining the macroscopic structure of the move-
ment output.
777
K. M. Newell & Y.-T. Liu
The nature of what preliminary information the com-
ponents provide in terms of a collective variable, how-
ever, becomes more challenging the greater the number
of variables in the component linear combination and the
more irregular the variable time series. This is in contrast
to the more regular motions of in-phase and anti-phase
that tend to map well with the outcome of a PCA. In the
former PCA situation, the clarity provided by the
‘ansatz’ of the relative phase of two variables, is masked.
Expressed another way, with the PCA approach, the
number of higher order components required to capture
the variance can be determined but the interpretation for
motor learning and control of what these components
represent through the variable weightings and projections
of the components can remain a challenge.
Haken, Friedrich, Uhl Order Parameter Analysis
Building on the PCA approach, Haken (1996) outlined
a dynamical strategy (the Haken, Friedrich, Uhl order
parameter analysis) to the determination of a proposed
order parameter(s) for the whole-body motion (multiple
joint space DF) pedalo task. The Haas et al. (1995) PCA
analysis to the pedalo decomposition had provided pre-
liminary evidence that a few if not just one component
captured the data and that the number of significant com-
ponents was reduced with practice. From this preliminary
PCA background analysis of the movement data
Equation 3 was created for examination in the context of
the pedalo data:
nu ¼ Aeixt þ h:o: (3)
where nu is a single complex order parameter, x is the
fundamental frequency ¼ 2p/T, T is the duration of one
period and h.o. is the higher harmonics that are assumed
to be negligible. The dynamical analysis led to the con-
clusion that one collective variable was enough on many
trials to represent the data that were single step cycles
rather than the more usual continuous time series con-
taining a series of cycles of locomotor activity.
Witte et al. (2003, 2009) used the Haken – Friedrich –
Uhl method in providing evidence that human walking
was captured by a single order parameter. Again, the sin-
gle step cycle approach was used in the data analysis. In
contrast, Lamoth et al. (2009) reported that a PCA of
timeseries of human walking and running found both
movement forms were dominated by the variance of
essentially the same first two principal components,
whereas a small level of variance in principal compo-
nents three and four distinguished the gait patterns.
Clearly, there remain a number of methodological
issues in the use of PCA in the study of coordinated
movement that need to be addressed to adequately exam-
ine the theoretical issues of collective variables and their
proposed role in reciprocal causality of multiple DF
movement coordination. The PCA is a useful analytic
778
tool to not only compress a data set with many variables
(its original basic function) but also to provide prelimin-
ary information that is relevant to understanding the
coordination dynamics, including the macroscopic prop-
erties of the task. This is particularly the case in terms of
interpreting the relations of the projections of the princi-
pal components in dynamical terms (Daffertshofer et al.,
2004; Lamoth et al., 2009).
Collective Variable of Learning Rate
Frank et al. (2008) have formalized a quantitative
dynamical systems approach to the development of a
self-organization principle and collective variable equa-
tions of a training regimen for motor skill learning called
differential learning (Sch€ollhorn et al., 2009).
Differential learning is assumed by Frank et al. (2008) to
be a self-organized process that results in the emergence
of subject- and context-dependent attractors. This theor-
etical framework it is argued contrasts with that of trad-
itional learning that is taken to be driven by external
factors and the formation of environmentally specified
attractors (Frank et al., 2008).
The modeling is based on an experimental investiga-
tion of traditional and differential learning regimens in
subjects performing the shot putt task (Beckmann, 2003;
Beckmann & Sch€ollhorn, 2008), where the differential
regimen showed a greater rate of change in performance
over training time. Performance improvement during
post-training periods is explained by a hysteresis effect.
The derived collective variable equation is a fourth order
polynomial potential. The collective variable with this
approach is in effect the learning rate.
The modeling strategy here to the determination of the
collective variable differs from the physical systems rela-
tive phase agenda introduced earlier (Kelso, 1995), and
as we will see in upcoming sections, also other
approaches to collective variables in motor learning and
control. Indeed, learning rate is traditionally a derived
variable from the change in performance over time.
Learning rate is not a macroscopic variable of coordin-
ation that reflects the structural integrity of the action
(Bernstein, 1967; Turvey, 1990) though it may be a
product of it. Moreover, there are multiple processes in
learning and as a consequence multiple time scales of
change (Newell et al., 2001).
Experimental Examples of Collective Variables in
Perceptual-Motor Skills
There have been two primary experimental protocols
used in the determination of the collective variable in
perceptual-motor skills. One protocol is a learning para-
digm and the investigation over practice time of the
emergence of the collective variable that characterizes
the macroscopic integrity of the coordination mode. The
Journal of Motor Behavior
 Collective Variables

FIGURE 2a. Example of a successful roller ball trial that increases the ball velocity of the initial conditions.

2021, Vol. 53, No. 6 779

K. M. Newell & Y.-T. Liu

FIGURE 2b. Example of an unsuccessful roller ball trial – the ball velocity did not get above the velocity of the initial
ball conditions.

780 Journal of Motor Behavior


FIGURE 3. Kinematic time series of a single subject
single trial of joint and body motions to the influence of
an oscillating platform that was increasing in frequency
to the same amplitude (Adapted from Ko et al., 2014).
second protocol is a performance paradigm where the
participants can perform the perceptual-motor skill com-
petently and the investigator seeks to determine the col-
lective variable (s) for this task and participant skill
level, together with the relevant control param-
eter influences.
Motor Learning and the Emergence of
Collective Variables
Here we highlight example studies of learning to form
a novel coordination pattern in perceptual-motor tasks.
We give emphasis to three papers that have followed to
varying degrees the set of procedures from coordination
dynamics for formally identifying the collective variable.
All of these experimental examples concluded with a sin-
gle relative motion measure as the collective variable for
the respective motor task.
Learning 90 Degree and Other Relative Phase
Relations in Bimanual Coordination (Kelso, 1995;
Sch€ oner et al., 1992; Zanone & Kelso, 1992)
This bimanual learning paradigm was a natural out-
growth of the experiments of Kelso (1981, Kelso, 1984)
and the resulting stability/instability landscape of the
intrinsic dynamics of bimanual coordination. The new
task to be learned was a particular relative phase (e.g.,
90 degree) that was unstable (greater fluctuations in rela-
tive phase) as revealed in the intrinsic dynamics of the
2021, Vol. 53, No. 6
Collective Variables
HKB model. As anticipated the participants through
practice reduced error around the 90-degree task goal
either in an incremental change rate labeled ‘drift’ or a
more abrupt change rate labeled ‘shift’.
To assess change in the overall landscape of the intrin-
sic dynamics as a function of practice on the 90 degrees
task goal a scanning technique was devised to determine
the change in the variability of relative phase over the
landscape of zero to 180-degree phase relation. This
technique was used to assess the stability/instability pro-
file of relative phase over a wide range of phase rela-
tions and determine how the landscape changes as a
function of practice and learning at the 90-degree task
(Kelso, 1995; Sch€oner et al., 1992; Zanone & Kelso,
1992). Evidence was provided that the whole HKB land-
scape changed with practice and not just the local
dynamics at 90-degree relative phase.
More recent experiments in this paradigm investigated
the learning of phase relations other than 90 degree and
the impact of transfer conditions on relative phase as a
function of the intrinsic dynamics of the system (Zanone
& Kelso, 1997). From these studies an additional gener-
alization of the HKB model for these bimanual learning
and transfer relative phase phenomena has been pre-
sented (Kostrubiec et al., 2012). Moreover, and import-
antly for the focus here, the learning protocols of
coordination dynamics provided further evidence that
relative phase is the collective variable for the bimanual
coordination tasks.
Roller Ball Task (Liu et al., 2019)
The roller ball (Gulick & O’Reilly, 2000; Higbie,
1980) provides practice and learning conditions in which
the participant has typically not previously produced the
collective variable for the task. In this situation, the par-
ticipants are not successful in the early practice trials and
producing the task goal of increasing the initial speed of
the ball. Indeed, in contrast to many laboratory experi-
ments, considerable practice is generally required to get
the ‘idea of the task’ as reflected in searching to main-
tain or enhance the ball velocity from its initial level
(Liu et al., 2006; 2010), and substantial further practice
to become skilled or dexterous in Bernstein’s
(1996) terms.
We were attracted to the roller ball task as a research
tool because our preliminary testing indicated that there
was a transition associated with learning the task that
took participants from the stable state of not being able
to perform the task through the unstable state of search-
ing for the task relevant coordination pattern that cap-
tures the structural integrity for successfully performing
the task, and finally to the new learned stable state of
task success. The task requires participants to hold with
one hand the outer shell of a ball and to turn that
through motion of complex arm-hand kinematic chain,
781
K. M. Newell & Y.-T. Liu
FIGURE 4. In 4a and 4b shows platform motion on trial 1 day 1 and a late practice single trial 20 of day 7 of a novice
subject. Figure 4c shows the cophase of the individual novice subjects on the first 3 practice trials of day 1 (adapted from
Dutt-Mazumder & Newell, 2018).
so as to try to increase the acceleration of the initial
inner ball speed that was the initial condition for the
task. The early experiments used probability of task suc-
cess as the performance outcome from the control
parameters and independent variables of initial hand con-
figuration, ball speed, and amount of practice.
The results were consistent in showing that partici-
pants went through a practice induced nonequilibrium
phase transition at the task outcome level (Liu et al.,
2010). This phase transition led to the task outcome per-
formance function of a sigmoid curve and what is known
traditionally as S-shaped learning (Liu & Newell, 2015)
– a learning function that is atypical given the prevalence
of an exponential or power-law function for the learning
of laboratory scaling tasks (Newell, Liu, & Mayer-
Kress, 2006).
In more recent experiments we have implemented sen-
sors to record in real time the velocity of the inner ball
and outer shell motions (Liu et al., 2019). This allows a
782
more direct test of whether relative phase is the collect-
ive variable for the task rather than relying on a prob-
ability of success score as we had done in the earlier
experiments. Figure 2a and b show typical individual tri-
als of success and failure and their time series character-
istics, respectively.
The findings provide strong support for the synchrony
(relative frequency) of the inner ball and outer shell as
the collective variable in this task. The initial segment of
a trial is focused on searching for the way to control ball
speed as reflected in the random-like phase wrapping
(see Figure 2a and b). The more skilled the subject the
shorter this exploratory search duration at the beginning
of the trial (Newell et al., 1989) and the time to the onset
of ball-shell synchrony. The kinematic analysis showed
that the spatial property in relative phase of the coupling
of the inner ball and outer shell was not critical to the
task leaving synchrony (timing) as the collective variable
capturing the relation between motion of the inner ball
Journal of Motor Behavior

(environment) and outer shell (mapped to body by fixed
position of the shell to the hand). Synchrony is an estab-
lished collective variable in the physical sciences
(Kuramoto, 1984; Strogatz, 2003; Strogatz &
Stewart, 1993).
The experiment of Liu et al. (2019) also revealed
degeneracy in movement organization whereby the par-
ticipants used one of three neuromuscular synergies (par-
ticular wrist, elbow, shoulder organizations) to execute
performance. This shows that the collective variable can
be distinct from the neuromuscular synergy and the task
goal in perceptual-motor skills that require the coordin-
ation of several DF, including functional coupling with
the environment (Warren, 2006). We used synergy in the
Bernstein (1967) tradition of muscular-articular configu-
rations while recognizing that this construct has since
taken on more general interpretations (Kelso, 2009;
Latash, 2008; Profeta & Turvey, 2018; Turvey, 2007).
Moving on a Ski Simulator (Dutt-Mazumder &
Newell, 2017, 2018)
The ski-simulator is a laboratory task that requires per-
formers to stand on a platform and to generate through
their own body side to side (medial-lateral) motion with
smooth, large amplitude and high frequency oscillations
of the platform. The task has been used to examine a
number of issues in motor learning and control including
Bernstein’s (1967) DF problem (Hong & Newell, 2006;
Teulier et al., 2006; Vereijken, 1991; Vereijken et al.,
1992). The dynamic balance ski-simulator task not only
allows but requires implicitly in a performance context
that the center of mass (CoM) for segments of the ski-
simulator cycle be outside of the stability boundary typ-
ically associated with the task constraint of
quiet standing.
It was with this background that Dutt-Mazumder and
Newell (2018) investigated the learning of a candidate
collective variable for the ski-simulator task.
Extrapolating from postural transition studies on a com-
puter controlled moving platform (Ko et al., 2014) the
hypothesis was tested that the relative phase of CoM to
platform in the medial-lateral plane was the collective
variable for this task. It was anticipated that the ski-
simulator task requires an anti-phase relation between
CoM and platform for the production of a successful per-
formance (Hong & Newell, 2006) because an in-phase
relation limits the amplitude of platform motion that pre-
serves a stable solution.
In Dutt-Mazumder and Newell (2018) experienced and
novice down-hill skiers practiced the ski-simulator task
over 7 days of practice. The standard task outcome
measures of platform amplitude and velocity showed a
practice by experience interaction whereby both groups
improved their movement outcomes over practice but the
performance of the experienced group was initially much
2021, Vol. 53, No. 6
Collective Variables
better than the novice group – a performance difference
that was reduced considerably over practice. Indeed, the
interpretation was that with further practice the obtained
group effect of experience on performance would be
eliminated altogether.
Of primary interest in the study, however, was the
effect of experience and practice on the changing coord-
inative dynamics and in particular the relative phase of
platform and CoM. On the initial trials of day 1 the
experienced group all showed anti-phase motion of CoM
and platform. In contrast three participants of the novice
group showed initially on trials 1-3 of day 1 an in-phase
relation of CoM and platform. With an in-phase relation
of CoM and platform the participant was acting in an
inverted pendulum mode that restricts whole body lateral
motion but magnifies it relatively in the torso and head.
However, these three participants by trial 4 had all
switched to anti-phase motion of CoM and platform
allowing the transition to a hanging pendulum organiza-
tion of the system whereby though the amplitude of plat-
form motion is large the motion of the torso and head is
relatively small (see Figure 3). That the transition of the
collective variable took place after very few trials sug-
gests that this stable movement pattern was available to
be assembled by the individual even on trial 1 (as in the
HKB model).
This study did not follow all of the experimental steps
of the Kelso (1995) framework for determining the col-
lective variable. In effect, an ‘ansatz’ was tested from
the anticipated generalization of findings from an exter-
nally pulsed platform (Dutt-Mazumder & Newell, 2018;
Ko et al., 2014) and a participant pulsed platform of a
learning paradigm (Hong & Newell, 2006; Vereijken,
1991; Vereijken et al., 1992). Furthermore, practice con-
sidered as a control parameter reduces the capacity of
the experimenter to control the trial to trial dynamics and
performance of the participant. And, unlike other experi-
mental control parameters such as frequency in bimanual
coordination, one cannot necessarily reverse with a short
time scale the consequence of adaptation effects
from practice.
Collective Variables of Performance Tasks
Here we highlight experimental examples from the
study of posture, locomotion and grasping that have
reported evidence of an emergent collective variable for
the performance of a given perceptual-motor task.
Static and Dynamic Balance
The maintenance of balance in standing posture is one
of the fundamental motor skills that infants typically
learn through the sequence of prone progression in first
18 months of life and continues to evolve over a range
of environmental conditions and task demands through
the life span. Winter (2009) and colleagues have outlined
783
K. M. Newell & Y.-T. Liu
the basic control features of standing balance and the
laboratory protocol that is now known experimentally as
‘quiet standing’.
The experimental work on posture has focused on the
motion of the CoM and that of the center of pressure
(CoP) in quiet standing (static balance). This is because
the stability of standing posture is viewed as dependent
on the preservation of the vertical projection of the CoM
within the base of support. In this framework, the CoP
reflects the location on the surface of support of the col-
lective neuromuscular input (reactive force) to control
the motion of CoM. Thus, the received position is that
the CoM is the variable that is controlled while CoP
reflects the controlling variable. Indeed, the low fre-
quency (< 1 Hz) components of CoM and CoP within a
quiet standing trial tend to be highly correlated (Wang
et al., 2014; Winter, 2009).
Does it follow, therefore, that the CoM-CoP relative
motion is the collective variable for standing posture?
The CoM by definition is a macroscopic variable reflect-
ing the location of the collective of forces on the neuro-
muscular system in the action under consideration.
Similarly, the CoP reflects the location at the base of
support of the collective reactive force to standing from
the inputs of all the joint space DFs. It is important to
note that unlike the variables discussed to date in regard
to collective status, CoM and CoP are not joint motions
or muscle activity DF, although both CoM and CoP
result from the collective influence of the joint motions.
This observation highlights the need to consider carefully
the frame of reference for the coordination problem at
hand and the determination of the collective variable.
In our view, the long-standing approach of using
standard deviation of CoM or CoP motion alone is not
sufficient to characterize the macroscopic topological
torso and joint motion relations of standing posture. It
would not, for example, distinguish quiet standing from
quiet hanging from a bar. A further limitation masking a
unique determination is that quiet standing is typically
studied in young adults that can already stand under
relatively natural conditions and, indeed, have done so
over many years of practice. A manipulation in infants
of practice as a control parameter through the sequential
stages of postural stability, instability, and stability of
postural control has not been conducted. In quiet stand-
ing, anterior-posterior (AP) CoP motion is typically
in-phase to CoM while medial-lateral (ML) motion is
anti-phase to CoM.
Our studies in dynamic standing balance tasks have
provided preliminary evidence of CoM-CoP phase rela-
tion as an integrative organizing (collective) variable for
standing posture (Dutt-Mazumder & Newell, 2017; Ko
et al., 2014; Wang et al., 2014). Subjects stood on a
force platform located a top a computer-driven moving
platform that oscillated a given amplitude and scaled in
784
frequency with the individual standing aligned to anter-
ior-posterior (AP) motion (Ko et al., 2014). The focus
was on the coupling between the center of mass (CoM)
and center of pressure (CoP) as a candidate collective
variable that supports maintaining balance on a sinus-
oidal oscillating platform in the AP plane and was con-
tinuously scaled up and then down across a frequency
range from 0.2 Hz to 1.2 Hz. The CoM-CoP coordination
changed from in-phase to anti-phase and anti-phase to
in-phase at a critical frequency (0.4 Hz to 0.6 Hz,
respectively) in the scaling up or down of the support
surface frequency. The CoM-CoP relative phase also
showed hysteresis as a function of the direction of fre-
quency change and critical fluctuations at the transition
region (see Figure 4). These findings of CoM-CoP
coupling have been replicated in a similar oscillatory
platform motion experiment in the ML plane (Dutt-
Mazumder & Newell, 2017). The approach outlined here
to postural analysis allows the consideration of static and
dynamic balance in the same frame of reference rather
than the traditional strategy of considering them as dis-
tinct tasks.
Walking, Running
It is established that speed of walking relative to leg
length can act as a control variable for the transition to
the gait pattern of running (Alexander, 1992). Less theor-
etical and experimental attention has been given to deter-
mining the collective variable(s) for walking and running
perhaps because of the biomechanical emphasis on the
kinematic and kinetic details of the limb and torso
motions, rather than their macroscopic organizational
properties. Here, as an exemplar, we consider in more
detail than in an earlier section, the PCA study of walk-
ing and running by Lamoth et al. (2009) for insights as
to the collective variable for walking and running. These
authors did not explicitly couch or interpret their study
in terms of collective variables but as noted previously
in the Haken (1996) framework the component analysis
of PCA provides a window into possible collective varia-
bles for the task.
Lamoth et al. (2009) investigated the multi-segment
and stride characteristics of walking and running on a
treadmill. Their main focus was to examine the coordin-
ation patterns and associated variance as a function of
walking and running speed, particularly around the gait
transition of walking to running. There were 10 belt
speeds that were incrementally increased and then
decreased with 60 s at each speed. 3D markers at 16
standard anatomical sights provided 48 time series for
each trial. Participants, as in the original finger wiggling
experiment (Kelso, 1981), were instructed to not resist
changing gait patterns should they feel this occurring.
Standard stride characteristic data were analyzed, in add-
ition to, a PCA analysis of whole-body segment motions.
Journal of Motor Behavior

PCAs were conducted for walking (PCAw), running
(PCAr) and walking to running (PCAwr) trials. The anal-
yses showed that 4 components accounted for 65-70% of
the variance for walking and running, respectively.
Moreover, the first 2 components were similar in both
walking and running while the first component repre-
sented the fundamental frequency of the respective gait
pattern. The results also showed a small but consistent
effect of speed on the 3rd and 4th principal components.
In essence, the study found that the coordination patterns
of walking and running are largely similar with small
differences in the definition and composition
of components.
Lamoth and colleagues emphasized the advantage of a
formal multivariate algorithmic analysis to determine the
kinematic patterns in walking and running, and their
transition, rather than an informal ‘ansatz’ of the relevant
collective variable. The focus here is their PCA deter-
mination of the independent components of walking and
running as this relates to the theme of collective varia-
bles (see also Phinyomark et al., 2015; Witte et al.,
2010). Lamoth and colleagues (2009) recovered the rele-
vant relative phases in the coordination pattern through
projections of the principal components, but, as said, the
interpretation of the PCA findings to collective variable
determination was not explicitly addressed.
The relative phase of variables in the frames of refer-
ence of work and energy may also be relevant to identi-
fying the collective variable, beyond the established
kinematic invariants of gait patterns. For example, walk-
ing is characterized by out-of-phase oscillations of kinet-
ics and gravitational potential energy of the body center
of mass (CoM), whereas in running these mechanical
energy components fluctuate in-phase as in the inverted
pendulum and mass-spring paradigms (e.g., Segers et al.,
2007; Segers et al., 2013). There has also been dynam-
ical modeling of locomotion-respiration coupling
(Daffertshofer et al., 2004). Mapping the dynamics
between the kinematic and work/energetic levels of
walking and running remains to be investigated, as it
does for most actions and the learning thereof.
A contrasting approach to the PCA decomposition of
walking is the ‘ansatz’ route of proposing what the rele-
vant collective variable is for walking. Thelen and col-
leagues (Thelen & Ulrich, 1991; Thelen & Smith, 1994)
pursued this strategy in a study of infants (7–9 months
old) learning to walk on a treadmill. They decomposed
the skill of walking on the basis that the task has step
alternation and essentially symmetry across the left and
right steps of the body. Thus, a 0.5 phase relation in feet
motion reflects these two criteria for walking. Indeed,
executing this ratio in the step cycle is consistent with
the definition of walking.
Of course, this pursuit of step cycle relative phase as
the collective variable gives up information details about
2021, Vol. 53, No. 6
Collective Variables
joint motions and other action variables. But according
to the research question this omission will be more or
less material. There is, also no reason why both measure-
ment approaches, relative phase and PCA, could not both
be implemented. Finally, one can get the step cycle ratio
for walking and other gait patterns with a reduced ana-
lysis of the whole-body kinematics. Hoenkamp (1978) in
a perceptual judgment experiment has shown that young
adult subjects can perceive the gait pattern (walking, run-
ning, skating) of stick figure simulations through the
relative motion of the hip/knee in the step cycle.
Grasping
The hand-arm skeletal-muscular complex has many
structural-functional DFs that provide a robust but flex-
ible system for coordination and control of a broad rep-
ertoire of fine motor skills involving reaching and
grasping (Connolly, 1998; Jones & Lederman, 2006).
Most of the joint DFs of the hand-arm complex are in
the digits of the hand but the wrist, elbow and shoulder
joints provide additional movement potential and flexibil-
ity for a broad and rich diversity of actions (Bernstein,
1967; Zatsiorsky, 1998), including musical skills, hand-
writing, typing, drawing, painting and neurosurgery. The
prehensile activities provide contexts and challenges to
address Bernstein’s (1967) DF problem that on the sur-
face may seem distinct from that for the whole-body
activities but that have increasingly been interpreted and
experimented with similar theoretical constructs
and methods.
The ecological approach to perception and action
stimulated several lines of the experimental study of
hand function, including the grasping of objects (e.g.,
Cesari & Newell, 1999, 2000; Newell et al., 1989;
Newell et al., 1989; van der Kamp et al., 1998;
Wimmers et al., 1998). These experiments on body-scale
information for grasping were motivated from the theory
of direct perception (Gibson, 1979) and the construct of
the animal-environment niche - the fit of the individual
to the environment. The experimental finding of the tran-
sition of the perception of the task-relevant mode of stair
climbing, as a function of scaling riser height (Warren,
1984), also stimulated body scaling movement experi-
ments in action more broadly (e.g., aperture passing,
reaching, hurdle clearing).
A central question in these studies of grasping was
whether body-scaled information specifies a particular
grip configuration for the affordance or goal of the
action? And, given a positive position on this - what is
the nature of that body-scaled information? In the grasp-
ing experiments, the participant looks at the to-be-picked
up object before the hand begins to move toward it
through to the completion of moving the object to a new
location. Thus, it is information that is picked up visually
that is specifying the task-relevant properties for reaching
785
K. M. Newell & Y.-T. Liu
and grasping together with the transitions of grip
configurations.
The above experiments on grasping had the relative
size (ratio) of the object to the hand formally or infor-
mally as the control parameter. This control parameter
manipulated over a sufficient range of relative object
sizes can induce transitions so that multiple grip mode
configurations of hand(s) and digits can emerge particu-
larly in the middle range of size parametrization. Thus,
in certain parameter ranges of the control parameter, the
grip configuration pattern transitions in terms of the use
of one hand, two hands, and digit configuration (# and
type) within and between hands. Complementary experi-
ments on transitions in prehension from the framework
of nonequilibrium phase transitions and coordination
dynamics have also been conducted (Kelso et al., 1994).
Frank et al. (2009) on the basis of the above experi-
mental findings created a dynamical systems model of
grip transitions when object size was scaled as a control
parameter. The study modeled the collective variable
dynamics of body scale hysteresis and grip mode transi-
tions of two experimental conditions: one to two hands
and two hands to one hand. The model was derived from
the Haken (1991) neural network model for pattern rec-
ognition that has been used extensively in experiments
on facial recognition.
The model for grasping has two collective variables:
one hand and two hands that are acting as nominal varia-
bles providing the structure to the range of grip configu-
rations over object size. This leads to development of the
landscape for the probability of a one or two hands solu-
tion. The model provides a novel solution in the motor
domain in that there are two collective variables and that
they are not relational measures. Thus, the model is a
qualitative solution that has given up some details pro-
vided from the prior experiments on the hand to object
ratio. In the model the deterministic aspect of grasping
behavior is completely realized by the two types of
fixed-point dynamics that specify one hand and two hand
grasps. The collective variable in this grasping protocol
is formed on a different basis from that of relative phase
and the dynamics of HKB and bimanual control.
Finally, it should be noted that the Frank et al. (2009)
modeling of grasping places the visually induced grasp-
ing transitions inspired from Gibson (1979) into the
same action category as the motor control non-equilib-
rium phase transition approach of HKB. This proposed
integration is open to experimental test in a grasp-
ing protocol.
Other Collective Variables
There have been a number of other perceptual-motor
tasks studied in the context of identifying collective vari-
ables. Several of these are sport tasks where the whole-
body movement demands invoke the Bernstein (1967)
786
problem of the coordination and control of multiple DF.
These studies include some formal but predominantly
informal analyses of a candidate collective variable:
social movement coordination (synchronization between
people of common body motion, Schmidt, Fitzpatrick,
Caron, & Mergeche, 2011); table tennis (stroke action -
forehand or backhand, Sorensen, Ingvldsen, & Whiting,
2001); badminton - speed scalar product between
motions of pairs of players (Chow et al., 2014); tennis
(relative phase of the motions of two players, Palut &
Zanone, 2005); horse-back riding (Witte et al., 2009);
and the game of basketball (offensive rating, Garcia-
Rubio et al., 2015).
Challenges in Determining and Interpreting the
Collective Variable Agenda
In this section we address some open issues arising in
regard to collective variables in movement coordination,
control and skill. The emphasis is toward the role of col-
lective variables in the context of Bernstein’s (1967) pos-
tulation that skill acquisition is the mastery of redundant
DF. Although, Bernstein (1967) and Bernstein, 1996) did
not discuss the general notion of macroscopic variables
in motor learning and control or the particular instanti-
ation of essential variables as outlined by Gel’fand and
Tsetlin (1962).
Emergence of Collective Variables in the Early Stage
of Motor Learning
Mitra et al. (1998) proposed that the formation of the
collective variable was the dynamical instantiation of
getting the “idea of the task” (Fitts, 1964; Gentile,
1972). This early stage of emerging coordination has
been largely by-passed in motor learning research due to
the task selection for experimental study that has typic-
ally required merely the rescaling of a coordination
mode that the participant has already produced. This
strategy has restricted the scope of the study of percep-
tual-motor skill learning, in effect, to the acquisition of
non-optimal control (Newell, 1985) or intermediate
motor learning (Mitra et al., 1998). Thus, the experimen-
tal studies of motor skill acquisition have focused on a
narrow segment of the dynamical landscape as reflected
in the prevalence of monotonic performance curves with
practice and learning (Newell et al., 2006).
In contrast, the field of motor development has given
emphasis to the progressive development from concep-
tion to maturation of the fundamental movement skills
(Gesell, 1952; Thelen & Smith, 1994; Wickstrom, 1977).
This emphasis gives focus to the emergence of new
movement forms or macroscopic coordination patterns
and more generally the qualitative change over time in
dynamics of children’s movement behavior. Young chil-
dren, therefore, are progressively learning and adapting
Journal of Motor Behavior

the fundamental motor skills through, in effect, the chal-
lenge of realizing new functional goals through action
(e.g., Thelen et al., 1987). The study of infant motor skill
acquisition through the emergence of the fundamental
movement forms lends itself to a dynamical decompos-
ition (Newell et al., 2003; Newell, 2020; Thelen &
Smith, 1994; Warren, 2006).
A question arising is whether the collective variable
for a given task changes through the life span of an indi-
vidual’s movements in action and skill acquisition.
Given the redundancy and degeneracy of the system
(Bernstein, 1967; Edelman & Gally, 2001) and the devel-
opmental changes that occur particularly in children and
the elderly, it would be premature to conclude that there
is only 1 or the same number of collective variable(s) for
a participant in a given task that is preserved over a life
span of (Newell & Morrison, 2016). Thelen and Smith
(1994) proposed that there would be a developmental tra-
jectory to the 0.5 relative motion designation for the pro-
gression of infant locomotion. Nevertheless, in the
absence of significant changes in the constraints on
action (Newell, 1986), we anticipate that most percep-
tual-motor skills will have the same collective variable
for a given individual considering stage of skill level and
age of the participant. And, moreover, that in many
tasks, the collective variable will be common across
healthy individuals from the same cohort group (e.g.,
walking by definition will hold at 0.5 relative motion of
two legs in the step cycle).
Beyond the infant motor sequence and the fundamen-
tal movement patterns in early childhood we intuit that
individuals rarely are required to learn a new pattern of
coordination to realize the outcome of an action. In
effect, there comes a developmental stage of the life
span where individuals in day to day activities are pre-
dominantly only scaling an already produced coordin-
ation mode with the same collective variable. The
exceptions perhaps are in sports, such as gymnastics,
high board diving, figure skating, and the X-games that
have tasks where even the adult participant has to learn
to form a here-to-fore not produced task relevant coord-
ination pattern that is also the goal of the task. Learning
to play a musical instrument may provide another area of
exception reflecting novel qualitative change in move-
ment organization.
Modification to the environment and/or health and dis-
ease issues in an adult could also change contexts suffi-
ciently so as to induce the search for a new task relevant
coordination pattern and the emergence of a new collect-
ive variable. For example, switching to a gravity free
environment such as the space shuttle changes the earth-
bound movement forms of human locomotion and the
mode of transport of the body from one location to
another. On earth, swimming as a functional form of
2021, Vol. 53, No. 6
Collective Variables
locomotion is only relevant in the context of water but
this may not be the case in space.
There are likely additional dynamical aspects to this
getting “the idea of the task” stage that are separate but
related to the emergence of the collective variable. These
would include perceiving the task goal and the relevant
constraints on performance and learning (Newell, 1986),
and in Gibson’s (1979) terms, perceiving what the situ-
ation affords for action. Nevertheless, in our view, the
emergence of the task relevant collective variable is the
foundation of the embedded constructs of movement
coordination, control and skill. It provides the qualitative
dynamical structure within which the quantitative details
of the motions of the component DF and their local cou-
plings are embedded.
This dynamical interpretation of the early stage of
learning implies that the traditional constructs of learning
through the use of instructional strategies as control
parameters (Davids et al., 2008; Schmidt & Lee, 2012)
should reorient to the fundamental challenge of facilitat-
ing early practice and the emergence of the task-relevant
coordination pattern and collective variable. Learning a
task would be enhanced by the decomposition of the
behavioral dynamics of movement coordination, control
and skill, the task relevant variables reflecting what is
controlled, and the determination of the most potent con-
trol parameters that effect functional continuous and dis-
continuous change in performance (Beek & van
Santvoord, 1992; Newell, 1985; Saltzman & Kelso,
1987). For example, the effectiveness of different kinds
of augmented information to facilitate search behavior in
early and subsequent learning will depend on the nature
of the skill to be learned and the stage of performance
competence of the learner (Newell, 1991, 1996).
Collective Variables and Elite Performance
There is an advanced level of the motor learning and
performance continuum that reflects highly skilled or elite
performance (Ericsson et al., 1993). There has been lim-
ited experimental study in any task of the elite levels of
motor skill performance, though there is recent research
activity built on the application of coordination dynamics
to the original learning through to elite performance of
dance and sport skills (cf. Davids et al., 2008; Fuchs &
Kelso, 2018; Renshaw et al., 2015; Vicinanza et al.,
2018). Indeed, the study of sport skills provides a rich
context to investigate collective variables together with
movement coordination, control and skill development.
As previously outlined, we anticipate that typically
there will be a low dimensional solution to the number
of collective variables at this macroscopic level of the
task learned through the lifespan with the redundancy
preserved at other lower component and synergy system
levels. The persistence of the collective variable reflects
the retention of the qualitative dynamics of movement
787
K. M. Newell & Y.-T. Liu
coordination over long retention intervals. Indeed, in
practice, it is often recognized anecdotally that people do
not forget how to swim or ride a bicycle, even over
retention time periods as long as 20 years. But, there is
only limited experimental evidence that the qualitative
properties of the dynamics reflected in the collective
variable are well retained over substantial retention peri-
ods of years (Nourrit-Lucas et al., 2013). Nevertheless,
these observations are consistent with the proposition
that there is a distinct and special role for topological or
more generally qualitative attractor dynamics in percep-
tual-motor learning.
The emergence of a low dimensional collective vari-
able as a function of practice is the general experimental
finding in regard to Bernstein’s (1967) DF problem
(Mitra et al., 1998). This reduction of functional DF in
motor skill acquisition, however, may occur only on the
collective variable with the motion of individual DF and
their couplings exhibiting a higher dimension of organ-
ization than that of the collective variable. A further
challenge of understanding the effects of practice is that
the dimension of the dynamical DF may not change uni-
formly in the single direction of a reduction for all tasks
as postulated by Mitra et al. (1998).
Newell and Vaillancourt (2001) proposed that with
practice the dimension of a continuous isometric force
output could increase or decrease according to the
dynamics of the task demands. For example, practice
increases the correlation dimension in a constant force
output task and decreases it in an oscillatory force sinew-
ave task (Newell et al., 2003). Similarly, the task goal in
dance or upper-limb motion tasks, for example, to maxi-
mize through practice the dimension of the joint space
dynamics (Deutsch & Newell, 2004; Newell et al.,
2000), could lead to a direction of change from the ini-
tial conditions opposite to the general assumption of a
reduced dimension with practice.
These examples provide further indications of the
strong influence of task constraints on the organization of
collective variables in movement coordination, control and
skill. Several questions arise in the context of Bernstein’s
(1967) proposition of skill as the mastery of the redundant
DF. Does the variability of the collective variable decrease
with practice and the advance of skill level? Or, does/can
the variability also increase with practice and skill learn-
ing due to adaptation to the redundancy in the task rele-
vant pathways of change in the organization of the
individual component DF? How does practice change the
relative variability of the collective variable, pair-wise
joint couplings and the individual joint motions?
The Nature of the Collective Variable and its
Reciprocal Influence
A central proposition from coordination dynamics is
that a task relevant collective variable emerges from
788
practice through the progressive harnessing of the many
component DF and subsystems (Kelso, 1995; Mitra
et al., 1998). It has been proposed that the macroscopic
collective variable is a relational (informational) property
of the system dynamics rather than a standard biomech-
anical kinematic or kinetic variable that are commonly
used to describe movement and posture. Based on the
initial and preliminary data this relational property seems
more tangible in the relative phase of the bimanual 2 DF
case than the more abstract outcome from the Haken –
Friedrich - Uhl method to determine the collective vari-
able in the multiple DF case of the pedalo.
A related foundational principle of coordination
dynamics is that of reciprocal (circular) causality (Haken
et al., 1985; Kelso, 1995, Kelso, 2009). This holds that
the collective variable provides macroscopic constraint to
the motions and local couplings of the component DF
and that the motions of the latter in turn influence the
stability of the collective variable. We are not aware of
any experimental examinations in motor control and
learning of this proposition from coordination dynamics
on reciprocal causality. It follows from Haken’s (1983)
theory of synergetics that the separation of the time
scales of the individual DF with those of the collective
variable(s) provides an essential entry point to this
understudied aspect of coordination dynamics2.
The principle of reciprocal causality is a construct of
the synergetics theory to the self-organization of nonliv-
ing systems (Haken, 1996). Our intuition, however, is
that in the domain of biological motion the reciprocal
causality construct is in a theoretical sense potentially
more relevant in tasks with multiple and redundant joint
space DF to be organized (Bernstein, 1967). This is
because unlike the 2 DF bimanual paradigm the collect-
ive variable in this context can be distinct from the task
goal and the individual DF motions (Liu et al., 2019).
Collective Variables and Task Constraints
The nature of the task constraints holds a strong rela-
tion to the nature of collective variables in movement
coordination. We are a long way, however, from identi-
fying task categories with types of collective variables.
This is in part because the emergent behavioral dynamics
of an action are channeled by more than the task con-
straints alone.
Three sources of constraint to movement in action
have been proposed (Newell, 1986): namely, the individ-
ual, environment and task. In this framework, task con-
straints include: a) the goal of the task - which leads to
movement outcome being a primary variable; b) rules or
instructions that specify or constrain how the task goal
should or could be realized; and c) implements (tools)
and machines that are used in action. The relative contri-
bution of these three classes of task constraints deter-
mines the degree to which a particular movement pattern
Journal of Motor Behavior

of the joint space DF is required to be successful in
the task.
There are perceptual-motor tasks where the movement
pattern is, in effect, the goal of the task. Certain closed
skills of sport (Poulton, 1957), such as gymnastics, high
board diving, and ice skating, fit into this category. As
noted earlier, we also interpret the HKB bimanual proto-
cols (Haken et al., 1985) as having the initial task goal
as synonymous with the collective variable: namely, rela-
tive phase. In this subset of perceptual-motor skills the
task goal can be interpreted as mapping directly to the
collective variable.
Nevertheless, in the broader context of the many
classes of perceptual motor skills the task goal and con-
straints are distinct from the collective variable, although
related in some way. To point up examples of the chal-
lenge of separating task constraints and collective varia-
bles we consider briefly two well-known motor skills
where task constraints in the form of rules have been
proposed for given actions: namely, riding a bicycle
and juggling.
Riding a Bicycle
Polanyi (1958) developed the case that in riding a
bicycle the rider was unknowingly through tacit know-
ledge following a particular rule. The rule observed by
the cyclist is this. When he starts falling to the right he
turns the handle-bars to the right, so that the course of
the bicycle is deflected along a curve toward the right.
This results in a centrifugal force pushing the cyclist to
the left and offsets the gravitational force dragging him
down to the right. This maneuver presently throws the
cyclist out of balance to the left, which he counteracts
by turning the handlebars to the left; and so he continues
to keep himself in balance by winding along a series of
appropriate curvatures.
The behavior of bicycling can, therefore, be expressed
as:
r  v =a
2
(4)
where for a given angle of imbalance (a) the curvature
of each winding (r) is inversely proportional to the
square of the speed (v) at which the cyclist
is proceeding.
This description of the bicycle kinematics emerges
from the confluence of constraints on action - individual,
environment and task (Newell, 1986) and departures
from this rule will lead to a loss of stability and even a
fall from the bicycle. This task rule from Polanyi is typ-
ically not explicitly apparent or stated in instructions for
riding a bicycle nor is it assumed to be known by most
cyclists. The rule, however, does hold properties similar
to those of a collective variable – a low dimensional
description that captures properties of the topological
organization of the skill. In a broader view of the task
2021, Vol. 53, No. 6
Collective Variables
dynamics of bicycle riding, Mitra et al. (1998) following
Stewart (1989) consider the problem as that of a rider-
bicycle 10 DF component system and the search for low
dimensional control of this 10-dimension space.
Equation (4) could be interpreted from a dynamical
view with a relation (to be determined) of a and r as the
candidate collective variable while considering, v the
speed of the bicycle, the control variable. The equation
also reveals why the bicycle is more stable at higher
speeds through what we would postulate as a greater sta-
bility region of the a and r relation. This inverse influ-
ence of bicycle speed is what makes learning to ride a
bicycle so difficult for the beginner who is typically fear-
ful of falling from faster initial speeds of the bicycle that
they assume they are less likely to be able to control.
A complementary approach to determining the collect-
ive variable in bicycle riding is to run a PCA analysis as
has been done in young adults learning to ride a unicycle
(Lee et al., 2017). The PCA showed that two compo-
nents accounted for the majority of the variance in uni-
cycle riding and it was interpreted through the PCA
weightings and projections that the two components
reflected the macroscopic properties of balance and pro-
pulsion. Thus, learning to ride a bicycle or unicycle may
be about coupling of balance and propulsion with syner-
getic leg motions playing a background role. As an
aside, Lee et al. (2017) found that some young adult
beginners failed to learn the unicycle even after 28 days
of practice revealing again that learning a new movement
coordination pattern can be a different and more difficult
challenge than the typical laboratory scaling motor tasks
(see also in juggling, Huys et al., 2004a, 2004b; roller
ball learning, Liu & Newell, 2015).
Juggling
Claude Shannon (1983)3 presented his now well-
known formula for juggling. Equation (5) is
ðF þ D Þ H ¼ ðV þ D Þ N (5)
where: F ¼ how long a ball stays in the air, D ¼ how
long a ball is held in a hand, H ¼ number of hands,
V ¼ how long a hand is empty or vacant, and
N ¼ number of balls being juggled. The formula is gen-
eral and provides a distributional analysis of the juggling
of a different number of balls with a different number of
hands. The Shannon equation also holds for periodic jug-
gling patterns in which a hand never contains more than
one ball (as in so-called multiplexing).
This formula for juggling would seem to provide the
basis for determining the relevant collective variable(s).
The equation is, however, not strictly a dynamical equa-
tion that specifies the time evolutionary properties of the
hand-ball dynamics in juggling, though it does relate to
that goal. An approach through acceleration of the balls
and hands might be able to provide a dynamical equation
789
K. M. Newell & Y.-T. Liu
for juggling (see Beek, 1989), and the relevant collect-
ive variable.
The Shannon Equation (5) reflects a task constraint
that needs to be satisfied if the performer is to retain the
integrity of the act of juggling (Beek, 1989; Beek & van
Santvoord, 1992). Put another way, if this formula is not
followed by the performer (when juggling standard pat-
terns) he/she will not be juggling successfully. Learning
to juggle and realizing the Shannon equation in perform-
ance reflects one of the more challenging perceptual-
motor skills for both the learner and experimenter (Beek
& van Santvoord, 1992; Haibach et al., 2004; Huys
et al., 2004a, 2004b).
The formula for juggling engages the interaction with
the environment in the form of the space-time trajecto-
ries of the hands and balls. The Shannon equation stipu-
lates that the hand cycle time (V þ D) is a fixed ratio
(determined by the ratio N/H) to the ball cycle time
(F þ D). It follows that juggling has the characteristic
whereby the performer can adjust within bounds the indi-
vidual times of balls in air/hand as long as the collective
of time in the hands and time in the air satisfies
Equation (5).
Beek and colleagues through a series of experiments
have produced a comprehensive decomposition of the
learning and performance of juggling, particularly 3-ball
cascade juggling (Beek, 1989; Beek & van Santvoord,
1992; Van Santvrood & Beek, 1996). They have shown
the multiple time scales and multiform dynamics of jug-
gling over a substantial period of practice (e.g., Huys
et al., 2004a, 2004b). Furthermore, and central to the
theme of this section of the paper, they have identified a
ratio k (Equation (6)) that is the time that the hand is
loaded with a ball relative to the complete hand cycle
(Beek & van Santvoord, 1992).
k ¼ D=ðV þ DÞ (6)
k reflects then, how a juggler accommodates the
Shannon equation within the different extreme expres-
sions of low dwell ratio (hot potatoe juggling) or high
dwell ratio (delayed juggling). k can take on a range of
values but for standard 3-ball juggling it is on the order
of .75 (Beek & van Santvoord, 1992).
k is a macroscopic variable of the timing of balls and
hands in juggling but is it a candidate collective variable
for the juggling task? The juggling experiment of Beek
and van Santvoord (1992) was not set up to test for a
collective variable using the sequence of experimental
procedures of coordination dynamics (Kelso, 1995 – see
appendix here). Rather, the juggling experiments were
set up under the related approaches to dynamical systems
of Farey Tree Ratios and nonlinear oscillator theory.
Although the terms order parameter or collective variable
were not used by the Beek group with respect to k in
juggling, a key hypothesis in this work is that k is
790
associated with the stability of juggling and thus holds
parallels to a collective variable.
k is a variable that captures the ratio of the time a
hand is loaded relative to the time of the complete hand
cycle. It is similar to the timing analysis of handwriting
by Viviani and Terzuolo (1980) who showed from a
motor program perspective that the relative time to write
a letter within a word is a constant ratio of the time to
write the complete word. Relative timing is a key vari-
able in the contrasting theoretical positions of general-
ized motor program (Keele, 1968; Schmidt, 1975) and
coordination dynamics (Kelso, 1995, 1997).
Juggling is a space-time problem but k has not been
extended to accommodate directly the spatial demands of
juggling or the coordination of the two hands in this jug-
gling task (Van Santvrood & Beek, 1996). Both of these
properties may be implicit in the k ratio but do they
need to be accommodated explicitly in a candidate col-
lective variable? Perhaps the richness of the dynamical
structures of juggling also makes the task a candidate for
more than one collective variable?
Closing Comments
Collective variables, in terms of order parameters of
macroscopic movement phenomena, were given a formal
and explicit place in the coordination dynamics of the
HKB model (Haken et al., 1985). Yet, in spite of the
many experiments inspired by the dynamical systems
approach to the study of movement in action over the
last 35 years, there has not been a proportionate theoret-
ical or experimental examination of collective variables,
and their proposed informational character (Kelso, 1994;
Mitra et al., 1998). Moreover, and relatedly, the postula-
tion of reciprocal causality (Kelso, 1995), and the associ-
ated notion of time scale separation, have not been
experimentally tested in the movement domain in spite
of its centrality to the coordination dynamics framework.
Our intuition is that the notion of collective variables is
a relevant theoretical postulation in regard to the degrees
of freedom problem (Bernstein, 1967) but that it is diffi-
cult to implement experimental tests of its implications
in the context of motor learning and control.
A considerable proportion of the studies on collective
variables either comes from or were motivated by the
research program of Kelso. The resulting experiments
were set-up and interpreted within the HKB synergetic
framework, with relative phase as the collective and
coherent variable in both brain and behavior dynamics.
This work has been the most extensive and formal of the
studies in identifying the collective variable and the add-
itional emphasis on the integration of theory, model
and experiment.
We have reported a number of experimental studies
set-up to determine the collective variable of tasks
Journal of Motor Behavior

beyond the 2 DF bimanual control tasks. Most of these
experiments have a more informal identification protocol
than outlined in the coordination dynamics validation
sequence (Appendix A) and, also at this point in time,
limited replicability. Nevertheless, the studies have iden-
tified the potential of several types of collective variable
in movement coordination other than a relative phase.
These findings are consistent with the position of the
task relevant nature of the collective variable
(Kelso, 1995).
The role of collective variables has been masked by
the task selection for experimental studies of motor
learning and control (Newell, 1985) that historically has
tended to err on the side of either single DF motor tasks
or in 2 or more DF tasks that the participant has engaged
in previously (Newell et al., 1989). As a consequence, in
most experiments the participants can or have already
produced a movement pattern coherent with the task
relevant collective variable at some point prior to the
testing leaving the study of learning, retention and trans-
fer as largely a movement scaling problem to the exter-
nal task demands. This narrow experimental framework
has restricted the breadth of investigation of the dynam-
ics of perceptual-motor skill learning as reflected in the
prevalence of monotonic functions of performance out-
come in learning curves (Newell et al., 2006).
The ecological theory of perception and action and the
related domain of coordination dynamics have advanced
the proposition that the collective variable is likely to be
an abstract informational variable and not a standard bio-
mechanics physical variable (Haken, 1996; Kelso, 1994,
Mitra et al., 1998). This postulation reflects a shift in the
theoretical emphasis away from the centrality of the
dimensions of joints and muscles in the long held but
still ongoing debate on ‘what’ is controlled in movement
(Latash, 2008). Ecological psychology and coordination
dynamics provides a theoretical framework to consider
relational (informational) constraints as well as physical
constraints to the acquisition of perceptual-motor skills
(Kelso, 1984; Kugler & Turvey, 1987; Turvey, 2002;
Warren, 2006). In this view, the collective variable will
be to a large degree task dependent because each task
has its own confluence of physical and informational
constraints (Newell, 1986; Warren, 2006).
Finally, a renewed emphasis on the place of task
decomposition from a dynamical view (Beek, 1989;
Newell et al., 2001; Saltzman & Kelso, 1987; Warren,
2006) would allow us to address further the influence of
task type on attractor dynamics, together with the emer-
gence of the collective variable in the early stage of per-
ceptual-motor skill learning. Task decomposition from a
dynamical framework could contribute to understanding
tasks for study that engage more than 2 DF in joint
space. This would offer a richer set of conditions to
build on the framework provided by the bimanual
2021, Vol. 53, No. 6
Collective Variables
protocol and to more directly examine the longstanding
postulation of Bernstein (1967) that skill is the mastery
of the redundant DF.
Author notes
We would like to thank the reviewers for their most
helpful comments and critiques on earlier versions of
the paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by
the author(s).
Notes
1. We thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.
2. We thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.
3. In an informal presentation at Carnegie Mellon
University July 1983 (from Beek, 1989 through
Raibert, 1986, p. 198).
ORCID
Yeou-Teh Liu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0559-1896
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Appendix A
An experimental strategy for determining collective
variables (adapted from Kelso, 1995)
1. Define the system and the joint motions used to
perform the task. Consider relevant variables other
than joint motions.
2. Make an ‘ansatz’ as to the system dynamics of the
interactions of environment, task and individual and the
likely collective variable(s) and control parameter(s).
3. Determine the relative stability of the patterns within
a phase transition experiment. The changes in the
control parameter should induce phase transitions
from less stable to more stable patterns. Phase
transitions are critical for the identification of
patterns with different stabilities. Critical fluctuations
should occur before the phase transition itself and
possibly hysteresis effects if the scaling is reversed.
The time scale of the experiment should be long
enough to observe the phase transitions. Identify the
slowest moving relations or patterns among joint
motions (potential collective variables).
4. Scan the dynamics of the slower moving
relationships and identify all possible relations
(patterns) among the components.
5. Identify the preferred and not-preferred patterns.
6. Mathematically model your system. Play with control
parameter and see how the system reacts to changes.
7. Test the model.
Received November 12, 2019
Revised October 7, 2020
Accepted October 8, 2020
Journal of Motor Behavior
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