Recent Lab News

Thomas Smith, Ph.D., affiliated lecturer in the School of Kinesiology, presented a paper, “School District Community Ambassadors for Improving Student Academic Achievement,” at a conference held March 1.  The conference, “Advancing Publicly-Engaged Research, Teaching and Learning to Address Society’s Grand Challenges,” was sponsored by the University of Minnesota. Smith’s presentation advocates the development of a […]

Kinesiology graduate students from the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory (APAL) and their adviser, Tom Stoffregen, Ph.D., have published an online article in the journal, Experimental Brain Research. The citation is: Li, R., Walter, H., Curry, C., Rath, R., Peterson, N., & Stoffregen, T. A. (2018). Postural time-to-contact as a precursor of visually induced motion sickness. The results of the study […]

Christopher Curry, Ph.D. student in the School of Kinesiology, has two posters being presented at the 2018 International Symposium on Human Factors and Ergonomics in Health Care in Boston, MA, March 26-28. Curry is advised by Thomas Stoffregen, Ph.D., professor of movement science in the School and director of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory (APAL). Citations […]

Hayley Pierce-Ramsdell, Kinesiology B.S. student, has been awarded a UROP grant that will support her work as an undergraduate research assistant in the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory (APAL) directed by Thomas Stoffregen, Ph.D. Hayley’s funded project is “The Role of Chromaticity in the Visual Control of Stance.” Her adviser for the project is Dr. Stoffregen, and she will […]

Tom Stoffregen, Ph.D., professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory,  published in a recent issues of Kinesiology Review. In his article titled “Ecological Physics and the Perceptual Information That Supports Motor Control,” he discusses the nature of perceptual information and implications for kinesiology. Kinesiology Review is the official publication of […]

Thomas Stoffregen, Ph.D., professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory, has his research mentioned in the British newspaper The Independent. The article titled “Virtual-reality headsets ‘make women sick,” is based on Stoffregen’s peer-published study that measured motion sickness using the VR headset Oculus Rift, which was originally published in […]

School of Kinesiology professor Tom Stoffregen, Ph.D., and co-authors Chih-Hui Chang, Wei-Ching Kung, and Fu-Chen Chen, have published an article in Aerospace Medicine and Human Performance. The article, “Effects of Physical Driving Experience on Body Movement and Motion Sickness During Virtual Driving,” studied body movement and motion sickness reactions of individuals, separated by age/experience driving physical automobiles, […]

Thomas Stoffregen, Ph.D., professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory (APAL) published the article “Effects of decades of physical driving on body movement and motion sickness during virtual driving”  in PLOS ONE, one of the premiere peer-reviewed open access scientific journals. Co-authors are Chui-Hui Chang, Fu-Chen Chen, and Wei-Jhong Zeng, all researchers at […]

Elisheva Savvateev, an undergraduate research assistant in the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory (APAL), has received a U of M Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) award. Thomas Stoffregen, Ph. D., professor in the School of Kinesiology, supervises her project, “The driver passenger effect in head mounted virtual reality.” The UROP Award offers financial awards to full-time undergraduates for […]

Thomas Stoffregen, Ph.D., professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory (APAL), gave an invited talk at the 87th annual meeting of the National Academy of Kinesiology in Washington, DC, on September 16. His presentation was titled “Ecological physics and the perceptual information for motor control.“  

School of Kinesiology professor Tom Stoffregen, Ph.D., was interviewed on Take Care, a radio program on health and wellness that originates at station WRVO in Oswego, NY.  Co-hosts Lorraine Rapp and Linda Lowen interviewed Stoffregen about his research related to motion sickness. The interview was broadcast on Saturday, July 15, and again on Sunday, July […]

An article by Thomas Stoffregen, Ph.D., professor and director of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory (APAL) in the School of Kinesiology, is among the 10% most-cited articles published in PLOS ONE. The article, “Getting Your Sea Legs,”  was published in 2013. It has been viewed 6,901 times and cited 30 times as of June 2017.   […]

Since 1990, Thomas Stoffregen, Ph.D., professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory, has studied motion sickness and virtual reality (VR), sometimes called “simulator sickness.” One of his interests is  examining the effects of VR and VR applications, which can cause people to become spatially disoriented and physically ill. In […]

On June 30, Thomas Stoffregen, Ph.D., professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory (APAL), gave an invited talk at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Woods Hole, MA, titled “Getting your sea legs: The horizon, seasickness, and adaptive human movement.” His presentation was cited in an article in the Cape Cod […]

Nicolette Peterson and Anna Solfest, both undergraduate students in the School of Kinesiology, participated in today’s 2017 Undergraduate Research Symposium sponsored by the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) at the U of M. Peterson, mentored in the UROP program by Tom Stoffregen, Ph.D., professor of movement science and director of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory (APAL), […]

Thomas Stoffregen, Ph.D., professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory, is one of two featured speakers at the 9th Annual Interdisciplinary Symposium of the Postural Restoration Institute in Lincoln, NE, April 20 and 21, 2017. The titles of Dr. Stoffregen’s keynotes are “Motion Sickness and Human Movement” and “Getting […]

Christopher Curry, School of Kinesiology Ph.D. student and member of APAL, has accepted a summer position as a graduate research intern in the Physical Ergonomics/Human Factors research department at the Mayo Clinic. At Mayo, Chris will be part of a team working to improve medical device ergonomics, teamwork, health care ergonomics and lean health care systems. […]

An online publication for the cruising set, To See the Sea, features an interview with Tom Stoffregen, Ph.D., professor in the School of Kinesiology and researcher on motion sickness. Stoffregen discusses his fascination as a boy in the 1960s with astronauts and space travel, including the phenomenon of motion sickness (which afflicts many astronauts in […]

Tom Stoffregen, Ph.D., professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Affordance Perceptual-Action Laboratory, was interviewed by the online publication PsyPost on his research relating to the virtual reality headset Oculus Rift. His study, conducted with Kinesiology Ph.D. student Justin Munafo and U of M undergraduate honors student Meg Diedrick, indicates that using the headset […]

Ruth Rath, Ph.D. student in Kinesiology,  and Michael Wade, Ph.D., professor in the School of Kinesiology, have written an article on posture and aging to be published in EBioMedicine, a journal that specializes in publishing research and commentary on translational medicine. The title of the article is, “The two faces of postural control in older adults: Stability […]