The Information for Learning to Act

University Of Connecticut, Storrs CT

Investigators

Abstract

Practice makes perfect, as the saying goes. With practice, we better judge our driving speed or where a fly ball will land. Similarly, practice improves bodily coordination. A baseball player learns to run in the right direction at the right speed to catch a ball. Likewise a driver learns to apply the brakes at just the right time with the just the right pressure to stop smoothly at a stop sign. Success in both tasks requires first that one can tune into the right information about the world and the body. But how a person tunes into the right information to enhance their performance is not well understood. With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Claire Michaels and Dr. Bruce Kay will conduct basic research to understand learning in the human perception and action. Their previous work suggests that people explore a definable "information space" to discover the right information. The funded research further tests this innovative idea. Close examination of hand movements when learning a simple interception task reveals general principles of how people discover the information to best control their movements. How the hand responds to disturbances such as brief temporary restraints illuminates other dimensions of the information space whether and how it concludes patterns of action, for instance as well as perceptual information. Knowing how the complex coupling of perception and action is learned and can be trained is increasingly important. Modern science and technology have created new problems of complex remote control. For instance, doctors and soldiers both navigate complex artificial displays of remote and sometimes dangerous environments. To best teach necessary skills requires a basic understanding of how skills are learned in the first place.