Current Issues In Perceptual Training Facing The Requirement To Couple Perception Cognition And Action In Complex Motor Behavior

Originally published in 1987, this title aimed to present an eclectic and biased account of the status of perception-action relationships in various fields at the time. The chapters can be divided into three sections. The first focuses on motor control, a neglected topic in the past and hence deserving the role of the starting point of this volume. In addition motor control provides a good background to discuss the clear sensory and perceptual effects. However, motor processes are also highly relevant to perception, which was usually less emphasized in the literature at the time. Therefore a special section is devoted to motor processes in perception together with the issue of integrating information from different sources. The book concludes with a section on attention and selection of perceptual information for subsequent action.

This book explores visual object recognition and introduces a collaborative model, codified as the "Perceptual Expertise Network" (PEN). It focuses on delineating the principles of high-level visual learning that can account for how different object categories are processed and associated with spatially localized activity in the primate brain. It address questions such as how expertise develops, whether there are different kinds of experts, whether some disorders such as autism or prosopagnosia can be understood as a lack or loss of expertise, and how conceptual and perceptual information interact when experts recognize and categorize objects. The research and results that have been generated by these questions are presented here, along with other questions, background information, and extant issues that have emerged from recent studies.

Three main topics are covered in this book, namely, learning, memory, and perception. The first section consists of seven papers and is devoted entirely to the learning of motor skills. The papers summarize the current state of perceptual- motor learning in general and highlight specific topics of interest to the informed reader. The second section is divided between movement memory and perception. In recent years there has been a decline in the popularity of movement memory as a research topic. However, some recent advances in cognitive science, and parallel distributed processing in particular, may now provide the basis for a renewed interest. The topic of perception never enjoyed the popularity that motor skill learning and/or memory for movement did. However there is now a clearer understanding of the perceptual processes and invariances that affect how we perceive the world. Others, like the renewed interest in signal detection theory and quantal reaction time, serve notice that the perceptual part of perceptual motor-skills is here to stay.

Improvements in task performance following practice can occur as a result of changes in distinct cognitive and neural processes. In some cases, we can improve our performance by selecting a more successful behavior that is already part of our available repertoire. Skill learning, on the other hand, refers to a slower process that results in improving the ability to perform a behavior, i.e., it involves the acquisition of a behavior that was not available to the controller before training. Skill learning can take place both in the sensory and in the motor domains. Sensory skill acquisition in perceptual learning tasks is measured by improvements in sensory acuity through practice-induced changes in the sensitivity of relevant neural networks. Motor skill is harder to define as the term is used whenever a motor learning behavior improves along some dimension. Nevertheless, we have recently argued that as in perceptual learning, acuity is an integral component in motor skill learning. In this special topic we set out to integrate experimental and theoretical work on perceptual and motor skill learning and to stimulate a discussion regarding the similarities and differences between these two kinds of learning.

Foreword / Leon J. Whitsell -- Preface -- Perceptual-Motor Behavior and Education -- Movement and the Human Personality -- Movement and the Intellect -- A Three-level Theory of Perceptual-Motor Behavior -- Some Social Dimensions of Physical Activity: Recent Trends in the Literature -- The Complexity of People -- The Independence and Interdependence of Visual Perception and Movement in Infants and Children -- Research Guidelines -- Research in Human Movement -- New Perspectives Upon Man in Action -- Movement Activities in General Education -- The Use and Misuse of Movement in Education -- Ego Growth and Movement Efficiency -- The Gender Identification of Children -- Personality in Movement -- Why Johnny Can't Right ... Write ... -- Special Education -- General Considerations -- Kinesiology and Special Education -- On the Threshold -- We Learn of Vision from the Sightless, and the Retarded Teach us About Cognition -- Blind Children and Youth -- The Development of Perceptual-Motor Abilities in Blind Children and Youth -- Mobility Research at UCLA -- A Summary and Implications of the Findings -- The Educability of Dynamic Spatial Orientations in Blind Children -- The Clumsy Child Syndrome -- Principles of Perceptual-Motor Training for Children with Minimal Neurology Handicaps -- Hyperactivity and Education for Purposeful Behavior -- The Mentally Retarded -- The Role of Motor Activities in Programs for Mentally Retarded Children -- Some Perceptual-Motor Characteristics of Children and Youth with Downs Syndrome -- The Orthopedically Handicapped -- The Use of Perceptual-Motor Activities for Orthopedically Handicapped Children -- Screening Test for Evaluating the Perceptual-Motor Attributes of Neurologically Handicapped and Retarded Children -- A Mobility Orientation Test for the Blind.

This book discusses the paradigm of quantum ontology as an appropriate model for measuring cognitive processes. It clearly shows the inadequacy of the application of classical probability theory in modelling the human cognitive domain. The chapters investigate the context dependence and neuronal basis of cognition in a coherent manner. According to this framework, epistemological issues related to decision making and state of mind are seen to be similar to issues related to equanimity and neutral mind, as discussed in Buddhist perspective. The author states that quantum ontology as a modelling tool will help scientists create new methodologies of modelling in other streams of science as well.