Deck 12: Moving on

Question 1

Technology has also been brought to bear to help stroke patients regain movement capabilities. Completed research along these lines suggests that

A) Stroke patients might benefit from virtual reality that increases the gain of patients' movements
B) Stroke patients might benefit from virtual reality that decreases the gain of patients' movements
C) Stroke patients might benefit from robots that assist or, in some cases, resist movements
D) All of the above

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Which is not true of clumsy children?

A) They show significantly higher timing variability in rhythmic tapping tasks than do typically developing children
B) They exhibit patterns of muscle timing that are less functionally suited to restoring balance than do typically developing children
C) They take longer to respond to release of the arm when it is initially held by a mechanical device than do typically developing children
D) They take longer to response to visual stimuli than do typically developing children

Answer 2

D

Question 3

Research on aiming is exciting vis à vis some research in economics that reaped a Nobel Prize because

A) The research in economics showed that people are unable to optimize along classically expected lines, and the research on aiming showed the same thing
B) The research in economics showed that people are unable to optimize along classically expected lines, but the research on aiming showed that people can
C) The research in economics showed that people are able to optimize along classically expected lines, and the research on aiming showed the same thing
D) The research in economics showed that people are able to optimize along classically expected lines, but the research on aiming showed that people cannot

Answer 3

B

Question 4

Steadiness of performance deteriorates, precision of performance suffers, and the capacity to pick up peripheral visual cues decreases when

A) People are intoxicated
B) People are in states of high anxiety
C) People are distracted
D) People are still learning

Question 5

Optimization is an important approach to human motor control. Examples of optimization are

A) Minimizing mean squared jerk
B) Maximizing movement smoothness
C) Expending as little energy as possible while hitting an acceptable number of targets
D) All of the above

Question 6

Even though champion table-tennis players can move their paddles at very rates, there are reasons to believe they adjust their ongoing strokes based on feedback. Two reasons are

A) Paddle positions are more variable at the start of the stroke than at the end, and adjustments to the ongoing stroke can be recorded based on visual information available during the stroke
B) Paddle positions are less variable at the start of the stroke than at the end, and adjustments to the stroke can be recorded based on visual information available during the stroke
C) Paddle positions are more variable at the start of the stroke than at the end, and adjustments to the stroke have not been recorded based on visual information available during the stroke
D) Paddle positions are less variable at the start of the stroke than at the end, and adjustments to the stroke have not been recorded based on visual information available during the stroke

Question 7

A feature of interest in dynamical systems theory is hysteresis. Hysteresis is

A) The tendency of some people to get hysterical
B) The tendency of movements to resemble scratching movements exhibited by people with allergies
C) The tendency of a system to switch from one state to another at a different point if the state switches from off to on or from on to off
D) Coupling of the finger motions of the two hands

Question 8

Trichotillomania, a psychiatric condition in which afflicted individuals compulsively pull out their own hair, is of special interest for future research in human motor control because

A) Movement data from bald people are probably less hairy than movement data from hairy people
B) A genetic mutation has been found to underlie trichotillomania
C) The hand and finger movements of trichotillomaniacs are probably no different from those of other people
D) a and c

Question 9

The fourteenth century English logician and Franciscan friar, William of Okham, wrote a sentence that urges us, in so many words, to

A) Be logical
B) Strive for the simplest explanations possible
C) Pray for nice data
D) None of the above

Question 10

When individuals pick up and carry an object from one position to another while walking, their handpath trajectories tend to be

A) Simple in extrinsic, spatial coordinates but complex in intrinsic, joint-based coordinates
B) Simple in intrinsic, joint-based spatial coordinates but complex in extrinsic, spatial coordinates.
C) Simple in extrinsic, joint-based coordinates but complex in intrinsic, spatial coordinates.
D) Simple in intrinsic, spatial coordinates but complex in extrinsic, joint-based coordinates.

Question 11

In the dynamical systems approach to human motor control, the aim is to

A) Flesh out the physical underpinnings of the motor so surgeons will have better methods
B) Develop the most dynamic methods possible for teaching skills
C) Identify equations that provide abstract description of the time-varying properties of behavior
D) Replace old-fashioned physics with new, more chaotic approaches

Question 12

The great golfer Tiger Woods once wrote that "Every good putter keeps the head absolutely still from start to finish." Data reported in Chapter 12 indicate that

A) Tiger Woods was correct on this score
B) Tigers Woods was incorrect, at least for the golfers studied in the article summarized in the chapter, for whom the golfers' heads moved in the same way relative to the putter no matter how experienced or inexperienced the golfers were
C) Tigers Woods was incorrect, at least for the golfers studied in article summarized in the chapter, for whom the golfers' heads moved in different ways relative to the putter depending on how experienced or inexperienced the golfers were
D) Tiger Woods was incorrect and this shows that nothing can ever be learned by asking what golfers and other athletes think about the way they perform

Question 13

A study described in Chapter 12 showed that observers judged movements with high mean speeds as connoting anger or excitement whereas observers judged movements with low mean speeds as connoting sadness or fatigue. An innovation of this study was that

A) The observed movements were point-light displays
B) The observed movements were inverted point-light displays
C) The observed movements were inverted and scrambled point-light displays
D) All of the above

Question 14

According to Lee's τ "tau") principle, the more quickly the image of an object expands on the retina,

A) The more time there is until contact is made with the object
B) The less time there is until contact is made with the object
C) The brighter the object appears to be
D) The dimmer the object appears to be

Question 15

Research on human motor control could help "save the world" in the sense that

A) Enhancements of already tested technology may make it possible to harvest more energy from people's walking and other activities
B) Enhancements of already tested technology may make it possible to harvest more energy from people's backpacks and other objects they carry or manipulate
C) It may become possible to develop autonomous robots that could perform missions in outer space that humans cannot perform that could, conceivably, be needed to save our planet
D) All of the above Chapter 12 Answer Key

Question 16

When two people jointly perform reaction time tasks,

A) They readily model each others' mental states
B) They model each others' mental states only very gradually and only if their responses have extraordinarily long reaction times
C) They never model each others' mental states
D) Their reaction times and accuracy are so dramatically different from reaction times and accuracy obtained in solo performance that it is pointless to compare one- and two-person reaction time experiments

Question 17

The coordinative dynamics of two swinging limbs moved by one person turn out to be

A) Not reflected in the coordinative dynamics of two swinging limbs moved by two people
B) Reflected well in the coordinative dynamics of two swinging limbs moved by two people
C) Coordination dynamics in two people have never been studied.
D) All of the above

Question 18

The textbook reviewed sources of evidence for tight coupling between mental and motor states. Among the reviewed findings were which of the following?

A) Body sway depends on the complexity of mental tasks
B) Walking depends on the complexity of mental tasks
C) Times to complete manual positioning responses depend on the complexity of the word-nonword) decisions leading to, and culminating in, those responses
D) All of the above

Question 19

Technology has been brought to bear to help people with severed or severely damaged spinal cords. This technology has relied on the general strategy of picking up electrical signals from the brain, amplifying the signals, and then delivering other electrical signals to the patient's muscles via electrodes. According to the textbook, this approach works most easily when

A) The signals sent to the muscles are based on population coding in the motor cortex
B) The signals sent to the muscles are based on population coding in the cerebellum
C) The signals sent to the muscles are based on the patient's reliance on trial and error learning, such that the patient learns, over trials, to generate brain signals that permit desired movements
D) The signals sent to the muscles rely on point attractors rather than limit-cycle attractors

Question 20

When people count objects, they feel compelled to point at the objects. This tendency illustrates the principle of

A) Moving with others
B) Response-response compatibility
C) Stimulus-response compatibility
D) Enactive cognition