61 posts · 35,926 views
Andrew D Wilson & Sabrina Golonka are two psychologists who are interested in developing a more coherent, naturalised approach to the scientific study of human behaviour. Andrew studies the perceptual control of action, with a special interest in learning. Sabrina studies similarity and categorisation. We're both interested in exploring non-representational theories in psychology, including dynamical systems and ecological psychology.
Andrew Wilson
61 posts
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- December 14, 2011
- 06:33 AM
- 2,582 views
Leaning to the left makes you believe odd things about embodied cognition
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
Embodied cognition is not what you think it is. But I do understand why people think differently; it's because of the depressingly endless stream of papers published in Psychological Science that claim to have found that body posture somehow influences the contents of some cognition about the world. The latest "exciting" new finding claims that estimates of magnitude (size, amount, etc) are affected by your posture. The paper is well summarised at the Guardian for those without access to the pap........ Read more »
Eerland, A., Guadalupe, T., & Zwaan, R. (2011) Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller: Posture-Modulated Estimation. Psychological Science, 22(12), 1511-1514. DOI: 10.1177/0956797611420731
Miles, L., Nind, L., Macrae, C. (2010) Moving Through Time. Psychological Science, 21(2), 222-223. DOI: 10.1177/0956797609359333
Restle, F. (1970) Speed of adding and comparing numbers. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 83(2, Pt.1), 274-278. DOI: 10.1037/h0028573
- January 25, 2011
- 02:51 PM
- 1,118 views
Identifying the Visual Information for Relative Phase
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
Bingham's model predicts that the information for relative phase is the relative direction of movement. The first direct test of this hypothesis was the experiment that followed on from my learning study, in which we systematically perturbed the various candidate information variables to see which affected performance in the perceptual judgement task.I like this study a lot, if I do say so myself. It's a serious attempt to make a strong test of the model's predictions, and we invested a lot of t........ Read more »
Wilson, A. D., & Bingham, G. P. (2008) Identifying the information for the visual perception of relative phase. Perception , 70(3), 465-476. DOI: 10.3758/PP.70.3.465
- August 24, 2010
- 05:01 PM
- 1,115 views
Coordination and the Haken-Kelso-Bunz Model
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
The first attempt to model coordinated rhythmic movement was the Haken-Kelso-Bunz (HKB) model. This model embodies a particular approach to modelling complex systems that has become common in perception/action research... Read more »
Haken, H., Kelso, J.A.S., Bunz, H. (1985) A theoretical model of phase transitions in human hand movements. Biological Cybernetics, 51(5), 347-356. DOI: 10.1007/BF00336922
- October 19, 2010
- 12:25 PM
- 1,115 views
The Ames Room and the Bower Bird
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
Research showing how bower-birds exploit perspective structure when building their bowers demonstrates why it's important to consider the role of perception when explaining how humans respond to, say, the Ames Room... Read more »
Endler, J., Endler, L., & Doerr, N. (2010) Great Bowerbirds Create Theaters with Forced Perspective When Seen by Their Audience. Current Biology, 20(18), 1679-1684. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2010.08.033
- May 11, 2010
- 11:38 AM
- 1,042 views
Affordances, Part 2: Affordances are relations between organism and environment
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
In an attempt to formalise Gibson's (1979) concept of affordances, Turvey (1992) defined them as real, dispositional properties of the environment. Two other authors have instead characterised them as real relational properties, defined across an organism-environment system.... Read more »
Chemero, A. (2003) An Outline of a Theory of Affordances. Ecological Psychology, 15(2), 181-195. DOI: 10.1207/S15326969ECO1502_5
Stoffregen, T. (2000) Affordances and Events. Ecological Psychology, 12(1), 1-28. DOI: 10.1207/S15326969ECO1201_1
Stoffregen, T. (2003) Affordances as Properties of the Animal-Environment System. Ecological Psychology, 15(2), 115-134. DOI: 10.1207/S15326969ECO1502_2
- July 12, 2011
- 06:40 AM
- 1,036 views
Visual feedback for training novel coordinations
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
The key feature of coordinated rhythmic movements is that not all coordinations are stable. Most other rhythms can be learned, however, which is why we can have jazz drumming. People have been training participants to perform novel coordinations (especially 90°, the least stable rhythm without training) for years now, and have been asking all the standard learning questions - how long does learning take? Does it transfer to other coordinations? The first real studies on learning were by Ke........ Read more »
Wilson, A., Snapp-Childs, W., Coats, R., & Bingham, G. (2010) Learning a coordinated rhythmic movement with task-appropriate coordination feedback. Experimental Brain Research, 205(4), 513-520. DOI: 10.1007/s00221-010-2388-y
- September 13, 2011
- 07:39 AM
- 1,017 views
Coordination dynamics and relative speed
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
The Bingham model of coordinated rhythmic movement makes three predictions. First, it predicts that movement stability is a function of perceptual ability, and we confirmed this in two ways (by showing how people can move stably at non-0° with transformed visual feedback (Wilson et al, 2005) and by showing that perceptual learning of 90° led to improved movement stability without practice at the movement task; Wilson et al, 2010). This prediction is also supported by recent work by Kovac........ Read more »
de Rugy, A., Oullier, O., & Temprado, J. (2007) Stability of rhythmic visuo-motor tracking does not depend on relative velocity. Experimental Brain Research, 184(2), 269-273. DOI: 10.1007/s00221-007-1180-0
Snapp-Childs, W., Wilson, A. D., & Bingham, G. P. (2011) The stability of rhythmic movement coordination depends on relative speed: the Bingham model supported. Experimental Brain Research. DOI: 10.1007/s00221-011-2874-x
- August 23, 2011
- 05:54 AM
- 1,008 views
There's More Than One Way to Rhythmically Move a Lobster
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
I'm slowly working my way through Olaf Sporn's excellent book, Networks of the Mind. The purpose of this book is to introduce neuroscientists to network theory, and vice versa; I'm eavesdropping and tooling up on both. It's slow going only because it's pretty much all new territory to me, but I'm seeing a lot of potential in the overall approach to the brain, and this just confirms for me that Sporns understands what he does pretty deeply.
Anyway, a while back, Bruce Hood tweeted the........ Read more »
Gonzalez Castro LN, Monsen CB, & Smith MA. (2011) The binding of learning to action in motor adaptation. PLoS computational biology, 7(6). PMID: 21731476
Prinz, A., Bucher, D., & Marder, E. (2004) Similar network activity from disparate circuit parameters. Nature Neuroscience, 7(12), 1345-1352. DOI: 10.1038/nn1352
Wolpert, D., Miall, R., & Kawato, M. (1998) Internal models in the cerebellum. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2(9), 338-347. DOI: 10.1016/S1364-6613(98)01221-2
- April 18, 2010
- 07:41 PM
- 1,004 views
"Smart" perceptual mechanisms
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
The polar planimeter is a device which directly measures area, and Runeson suggests it might serve as a model for the detection of the higher-order variables proposed by Gibson... Read more »
RUNESON, S. (1977) On the possibility of "smart" perceptual mechanisms. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 18(1), 172-179. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9450.1977.tb00274.x
- May 10, 2010
- 12:15 PM
- 984 views
Affordances, Part 1: Affordances are real dispositions of the environment
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
A key concept in ecological psychology is that of affordances. There is still uncertainty how to characterise these (slightly odd) properties, and the first formal attempt was by Turvey (1992).... Read more »
Turvey, M. (1992) Affordances and Prospective Control: An Outline of the Ontology. Ecological Psychology, 4(3), 173-187. DOI: 10.1207/s15326969eco0403_3
- March 15, 2011
- 08:15 AM
- 957 views
Chemero (2009), Chapter 5: Guides to Discovery
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
The dynamical stance laid out by Chemero in the previous chapter has a potential flaw (besides being a bit weak-ass) - it's not clear how it can serve as a guide to discovery. How do you do productive science taking this approach? Chemero is going to make two suggestions, only one of which I think works: first, he's going to suggest dynamical models such as the Haken-Kelso-Bunz (HKB) model can serve to stimulate empirical work even when they are entirely phenomenological. This approach is, I thi........ Read more »
Chemero, A. (2000) Anti-Representationalism and the Dynamical Stance. Philosophy of Science, 67(4), 625. DOI: 10.1086/392858
- November 9, 2010
- 09:20 AM
- 909 views
Establishing the Role of Perception in Coordination: Proprioception and Action Measures
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
Previous research had established that relative phase could be perceived visually: but actual actions entail proprioception. In addition, the judgement experiments are not the same as movements. ... Read more »
Wilson, A., Bingham, G., & Craig, J. (2003) Proprioceptive Perception of Phase Variability. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 29(6), 1179-1190. DOI: 10.1037/0096-1523.29.6.1179
Wilson, AD., Collins, D., & Bingham, GP. (2005) Perceptual coupling in rhythmic movement coordination: stable perception leads to stable action. Experimental Brain Research, 164(4), 517-528. DOI: 10.1007/s00221-005-2272-3
- January 11, 2011
- 05:21 AM
- 888 views
There's No Prospective Information About Friction, or, Why I Fell Over on the Ice
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
In which I justify why I, a healthy perceiver-actor, slipped and fell on a clearly visible icy patch, breaking my wrist for the second time, using SCIENCE.
It's been a cold, icy winter here this year, and 6 weeks ago I slipped on a patch of ice and fell entirely on my (previously broken) wrist. The ensuing physics did enough damage that I needed surgery to set the wrist with two pins, and I am only today out of the cast. These kinds of falls and injuries are very common; half of all falls i........ Read more »
Joh AS, Adolph KE, Campbell MR, & Eppler MA. (2006) Why walkers slip: shine is not a reliable cue for slippery ground. Perception , 68(3), 339-52. PMID: 16900828
Joh AS, Adolph KE, Narayanan PJ, & Dietz VA. (2007) Gauging possibilities for action based on friction underfoot. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance, 33(5), 1145-57. PMID: 17924813
- July 19, 2011
- 06:47 AM
- 884 views
Lissajous feedback and coordination stability
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
Understanding the perceptual information you provide people in a task is a critical element of the perception-action analysis. Last time I talked about the new form of coordination feedback I developed to allow us to train coordinated rhythmic movements without perturbing the task dynamic. Prior to this, the most common form of augmented feedback was the Lissajous plot - these are the result of plotting the displacements of two harmonic oscillators against one another, and the unique shape ........ Read more »
Kovacs, A., Buchanan, J., & Shea, C. (2009) Bimanual 1:1 with 90° continuous relative phase: difficult or easy!. Experimental Brain Research, 193(1), 129-136. DOI: 10.1007/s00221-008-1676-2
Kovacs, A., Buchanan, J., & Shea, C. (2009) Using scanning trials to assess intrinsic coordination dynamics. Neuroscience Letters, 455(3), 162-167. DOI: 10.1016/j.neulet.2009.02.046
Kovacs, A., & Shea, C. (2010) Amplitude differences, spatial assimilation, and integrated feedback in bimanual coordination. Experimental Brain Research, 202(2), 519-525. DOI: 10.1007/s00221-009-2154-1
- January 18, 2011
- 01:56 PM
- 874 views
Perceptual Learning Stabilises Action: A Test of the Bingham Model
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
Bingham's perception-action model was initially inspired by perceptual judgement studies (using vision and proprioception). The HKB phenomena are movement phenomena, however; simply noting that the same qualitative pattern is seen in different judgement and action studies is a good first step but only suggestive, at best. We therefore next took simultaneous judgement & action measures from a movement task where we manipulated the feedback display (Wilson et al, 2005a). For instance, when the........ Read more »
Wilson, A., Snapp-Childs, W., & Bingham, G. (2010) Perceptual learning immediately yields new stable motor coordination. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 36(6), 1508-1514. DOI: 10.1037/a0020412
- August 21, 2011
- 02:57 PM
- 870 views
Mirrors are Literally Windows to Another World
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
The other day, psychologist Tom Hartley tweeted "Your reflection is always half the size of the real thing - no matter how far from mirror. Hard to believe but true." and linked to this post in which someone demonstrates this effect. I had never quite thought about it, but realised it was of course always true: the mirror is at half the distance specified in the reflection. Then I read this post linked from the original, which reviewed an article by Lawson et al (2007) describing how people mis........ Read more »
Gibson, J. (1950) The Perception of Visual Surfaces. The American Journal of Psychology, 63(3), 367. DOI: 10.2307/1418003
Lawson, R., Bertamini, M., & Liu, D. (2007) Overestimation of the projected size of objects on the surface of mirrors and windows. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 33(5), 1027-1044. DOI: 10.1037/0096-1523.33.5.1027
- November 16, 2010
- 10:14 AM
- 859 views
A Perception/Action Model of Coordination
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
It's easy to build a model that can fit your data. It's much harder to build a model that actually reflects the perception/action mechanism for a task, but such models are critical. The only current example in the literature is Bingham's model of bimanual coordinated rhythmic movement, and this is how he made it.... Read more »
Bingham, G. (2004) A Perceptually Driven Dynamical Model of Bimanual Rhythmic Movement (and Phase Perception). Ecological Psychology, 16(1), 45-53. DOI: 10.1207/s15326969eco1601_6
- March 29, 2011
- 02:22 PM
- 819 views
Chemero (2009) Chapter 7: Affordances, etc (Pt 1)
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
If you want perception to be direct (no 'mental gymnastics') you must identify where the content of perceptual experience comes from; when I view a chair, for example, I don't see a meaningless or random collection of surfaces or colours, I see an object that I can interact with in some ways and not others. For traditional, indirect theories of perception, this meaning is constructed internally: mental representations perform transformations (perhaps computational ones) on sensory input to infer........ Read more »
Turvey, M. (1992) Affordances and Prospective Control: An Outline of the Ontology. Ecological Psychology, 4(3), 173-187. DOI: 10.1207/s15326969eco0403_3
Turvey, M. T., Shaw, R. E., Reed, E. S., . (1981) Ecological laws of perceiving and acting: In reply to Fodor and Pylyshyn (1981). Cognition, 9(3), 237-304. DOI: 10.1016/0010-0277(81)90002-0
- June 28, 2011
- 11:39 AM
- 807 views
Task Specific Devices and the Perceptual Bottleneck
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
I've been wanting to blog this paper, Bingham (1988; download link), for some time, and I've had the excuse to be reading it this week as I develop a grant. There's a lot here, and many of these brief points are worth posts in and of themselves. My goal here was to create a walk through of the paper, and I hope to dive into some of these issues in more detail.This paper comes from Geoff Bingham, my PhD advisor at IU. And, like most of the good things Geoff has taught me over the years, this pape........ Read more »
Bingham, G. (1988) Task-specific devices and the perceptual bottleneck☆. Human Movement Science, 7(2-4), 225-264. DOI: 10.1016/0167-9457(88)90013-9
- March 25, 2010
- 11:05 AM
- 802 views
Poverty of Stimulus and Ecological Laws
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
The first critique of Gibson's perceptual psychology came from noted cognitive scientists Fodor & Pylyshyn (1981). The critique was simply that Gibsonian information is an empty concept; however, this critique is ably addressed by Turvey, Shaw, Reed & Mace in the 'ecological laws' paper.... Read more »
Fodor, J., . (1981) How direct is visual perception?: Some reflections on Gibson's “ecological approach”. Cognition, 9(2), 139-196. DOI: 10.1016/0010-0277(81)90009-3
Turvey, M. T., Shaw, R. E., Reed, E. S., . (1981) Ecological laws of perceiving and acting: In reply to Fodor and Pylyshyn (1981). Cognition, 9(3), 237-304. DOI: 10.1016/0010-0277(81)90002-0
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