Absolute Coordination: An Ecological Perspective

doi:10.1016/S0166-4115(08)60020-5

Advances in Psychology

Volume 61, 1989, Pages 123-156

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0166-4115(08)60020-5 Get rights and content

The ecological perspective on the coordination of movement is discussed with regard to the most basic, pervasive form of coordination, namely, absolute coordination. The working hypothesis of the ecological perspective is that coordinations are largely due to general laws and principles. Dynamical explanations of phenomena such as von Hoist's magnet effect and maintenance tendency, as well as locomotory time allometries of both large and small organisms, are reviewed. The role of information in the functioning of dynamically based action systems is discussed, where information is understood in the Gibsonian (1979) specificational sense.

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Cited by (8)

Individual and dyadic rope turning as a window into social coordination
2018, Human Movement Science
Citation Excerpt :
Regardless, at the same time, we found a significant, positive correlation between the partners’ detuning and the change in frequency in the dyadic condition relative to the individual condition, indicating that in the dyadic condition participants were affected by their partner’s spontaneous frequency. This frequency attraction mimics the magnet-effect identified by von Holst (1908/1962) stipulating that two oscillators tend to pull each other to their preferred individual frequencies (see also Schmidt & O’Brien, 1997; Schmidt & Turvey, 1989), even though the dyads did not actually settle on a ‘middle ground’. In combination, these findings suggest that the frequency attraction between two rhythmically moving units is generic, but that the task constraints dictate whether their coupled frequency will fall in between the individual ones or not.
The spontaneous and intentional movement coordination between peoples is well understood. Less is known about such interactions when the coordination is subordinate to the task and when the task involves, next to vision, mechanically induced haptic and kinesthetic coupling between dyadic partners. We therefore investigated dyadic jump rope turning. Fifteen dyadic pairs conjointly turned a jump rope to which five markers were equidistantly attached, and whose movements were recorded in 3D. In addition, each participant turned one side of the rope while the other side was quasi-fixed in an individual baseline condition. The participants’ goal was to turn the rope regularly and smoothly. Individual spontaneous turning frequencies differed substantially across participants. Yet, dyadic pairs spontaneously turned the rope at a common frequency, indicative of frequency entrainment. The dyadic rope rotations were less variable despite weaker between near-hand marker coordination than the individual rope rotations, and the degree of performance improvement was most pronounced for participants who were paired with a partner who performed better in the individual condition. The direction and relative strength of the coupling between partners varied substantially across dyads, but the degree of coupling asymmetry had no substantial effect on the rope tuning quality. The absolute degree in which dyadic partners adjusted to each other, however, scaled moderately with their turning performance. Although the individual performances did not predict the dyadic performances, the difference in individual performance between dyadic partners had some predictive value for the dyadic performance. In combination, these results indicate that the partners were functionally adapting to each other in order to satisfy the task goal and suggest that the relative performance differences rather than the individual performances has predictive value for conjoint action.
The coordination and control of human creeping with increases in speed
1994, Behavioural Brain Research
Changes were documented in the inter-limb and intra-limb timing of well trained adult males creeping at increasing speed on a motor-driven treadmill. A power function (y = ax^b) showed a good fit to hand and foot stride and support duration (y) and speed (x), a finding that parallels the changes expected in normal upright walking. Similarly, limbs of the same girdle maintained a half-cycle phase lag as speed increased. Swing duration, however, showed cyclical changes with increasing speed, a phenomenon not previously reported either for quadrupedal gait or normal upright gait. Ipsilateral hands and feet abruptly changed their phase-lags at a constant percentage of maximum speed in a manner similar to gait transitions observed in quadrupedal species. Explanations for these transitions were suggested, such as physical constraints on the speed of limb movement and the organism's biomechanical adaptation to increased metabolic energy expenditure.
Long-term consistencies in assembling coordinated rhythmic movements
1992, Human Movement Science
At the level of tasks the problem of coordination is relating families of potential circumstances to families of potential movement patterns. Major theoretical efforts to address this problem hypothesize that any task-specific coordination is a function which generates for any given circumstance a movement pattern satisfying the task criteria. In three experiments spanning approximately two years, the same three subjects were required to achieve a 1:1 frequency locking of rhythmic motions about the wrists under variable circumstances comprising different loadings of the two limb segments. Mappings between measures of the coordination problem and measures of the coordination solution were determined. Similar single-valued functions spanning the period of investigation were observed for each subject. The results are discussed in terms of the parameterization of an oscillatory control structure by the magnitude and asymmetry of the inertial loadings at the wrists.
Soft assembly of an infant locomotor action system
1991, Advances in Psychology
Task Dynamics and Resource Dynamics in the Assembly of a Coordinated Rhythmic Activity
1991, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
Individuality and togetherness in joint improvised motion
2014, PLoS ONE

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^§: The writing of this chapter was supported in part by a NIH grant (BRS-RR-05596) awarded to Haskins Laboratories, a grant from NSF (BNS-8811510), a University of Connecticut dissertation fellowship awarded to the first author, and a James McKeen Cattell Fellowship awarded to the second author.

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Absolute Coordination: An Ecological Perspective§

Neuroscience

Biophysics Journal

Acta Psychologica

Journal of Theoretical Biology

Christian Huygens and the development of science in the seventeenth century.

The control and regulation of movements.

Kinematic form and scaling: Further investigations on the visual perception of lifted weights.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance

Contribution of the sarcolemma to the force exerted by resting muscle of insects.

Acta Physiologica Scandanavia

Elastic bounce of the body.

Journal of Applied Physiology

Elastic energy in muscle.

Exercise and Sports Science Reviews

A relationship between a freely chosen working pace and energy consumption curves.

Ergonomics

Central generation of locomotion in vertebrates.

Functional tuning of the nervous system with control of movement or maintenance of a steady posture: III. Mechanographic analysis of execution by man of the simplest motor tasks.

Biophysics

Once more on the equilibrium-point hypothesis (lambda model) for motor control.

Journal of Motor Behavior

The personal tempo and its inheritance.

Character and Personality

The ecological approach to visual perception.

Locomotion in vertebrates: Central mechanisms and reflex interactions.

Physiological Review

The wings of insects and birds as mechanical oscillators.

Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society

The flight of birds.

Transactions of the American Philosophical Society

Gait and the energetics of locomotion in horses.

Nature

The space-time behavior of single and bimanual rhythmical movements.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance

Pattern formation in speech and limb movements involving many degrees of freedom.

Information, natural law and the self-assembly of rhythmic movement.

The physics of controlled collisions: A reverie about locomotion.

Absolute Coordination: An Ecological Perspective^§