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Among children learning to read braille, we asked whether the quantitative kinematics of scanning movements of the reading finger would be related to the proficiency of braille reading. Over a period of 12 months, we recorded the position and orientation of the reading fingers of eight congenitally or early blind children. We found that the strength of long-range power-law temporal correlations in the velocity fluctuations increased with performance in braille reading. In addition, we found that...

What happens to our Kinesiology graduates after they leave Cooke Hall? Recently we spoke with Kinesiology PhD graduate Hannah Walter to tell us about life after school and share her words of advice and wisdom.

Justin Munafo is a graduate student in the School of Kinesiology, at the University of Minnesota. He is pursuing a PhD in Kinesiology with a minor in Human Factors. He currently works for Google as a User Experience Researcher in California.

School of Kinesiology PhD students and members of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory (APAL) Chris Curry, Nicollete Peterson, and Ruth Rath, published work in Frontiers in Virtual Reality along with Thomas Stoffregen, PhD, professor and director of APAL.

Thomas Stoffregen, PhD, professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory (APAL), published an article on November 26, 2020 titled, “Effects of physical driving experience on body movement and motion sickness among passengers in a virtual vehicle.” The article was published in the Experimental Brain Research Journal and was co-authored by former School of Kinesiology PhD student, Chih‐Hui Chang, PhD.

Virtual vehicles (e.g., driving video games) can give rise to visually induced motion sickness. Typically, people drive virtual vehicles. In the present study, we investigated motion sickness among participants who were exposed to virtual vehicles as passengers; that is, they observed vehicle motion, but did not control it. We also asked how motion sickness and the postural precursors of motion sickness might be influenced by participants' previous experience of driving physical vehicles....

 School of Kinesiology professor and director of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory, Thomas Stoffregen, PhD, was invited to join a group of experts in summarizing the current state of the field in “cybersickness.” In an article published in the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction titled “Identifying Causes of and Solutions for Cybersickness in Immersive Technology: Reformulation of a Research […]

On Friday, September 11, School of Kinesiology professor and director of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory, Thomas Stoffregen, PhD, presented at the Driving Simulation Conference (DSC2020), held in Antibes France. The conference featured “driving simulation specialists from the industrial and academic communities as well as commercial simulation.” Stoffregen gave an invited keynote address titled, “Motion sickness in physical and […]

Purpose: We investigated youth soccer players' perception of affordances for different types of kicks. Method: In the Power task, players judged the maximum distance they could kick the ball. In the Precision task, players judged how close to a designated target line they could kick the ball. Following judgments, players performed each task. Both judgments and performance were assessed immediately before and immediately after players competed in a regulation soccer match, thereby permitting us...

Thomas Stoffregen, PhD, professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory (APAL), recently published an article titled “Perception of Affordances for Vertical and Horizontal Jumping in Children: Gymnasts Versus Non-Athletes” in the journal Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport.  Read the abstract here. Co-authors of the publication include visiting APAL […]

Purpose: We investigated the perception of affordances for vertical jumping-and-reaching and horizontal jumping by children. Method: In the horizontal task, children were asked to judge their ability in the standing long jump. In the vertical task, children were asked to judge the height of a ball that they could run to, jump up, and reach with their fingertips. Following judgments, children performed both types of jumps. We compared gymnasts (children with at least 2 years of gymnastics...

Members of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory, directed by Thomas Stoffregen, PhD and housed in the School of Kinesiology, published an article titled “Postural precursors of motion sickness in head-mounted displays: drivers and passengers, women and men,” on August 24, 2020. Publishing authors are lab members and School of Kinesiology doctoral students Christopher Curry, Nicolette Peterson, […]

In the Ecological Approach to Perception and Action, affordances are emergent, higher-order relationships in an animal-environment system. In addition, perceivers should perceive such relationships directly, rather than by combining lower-order constituents of the affordance, such as non-affordance properties of the animal or the environment. In the present study, we investigated whether this latter claim applied to perception of superordinate affordances - affordances that emerge from relations...

Thomas Stoffregen, PhD, professor in the School of Kinesiology published an article on August 16, 2020 titled “It doesn’t add up: Nested affordances for reaching are perceived as a complex particular.” The article was published in the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, and was co-authored by Jeffrey B. Wagman. The abstract of the article is […]

Motion sickness is preceded by distinctive patterns of postural activity that differ between the sexes. We asked whether such postural precursors of motion sickness might exist before participants were exposed to a virtual driving game presented via a head-mounted display. Men and women either controlled a virtual vehicle (drivers), or viewed a recording of virtual vehicle motion (passengers). Before exposure to the game, we recorded standing body sway while participants performed simple visual...

Lab members of the Human Sensorimotor Control Laboratory, Jinseok Oh and Arash Mahnan, as well as lab member in the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory, Chris Curry, recently published a paper titled “Investigation of the effect of virtual reality on postural stability in healthy adults.” The paper was published in the 2020 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality […]

The use of a spoon for eating is among the important daily skills in early development. The article provides an analysis of how caregiver-toddler interactions guides the attention of toddlers who were first learning how to use a spoon to spoon-related action opportunities that were relevant to the mealtime context. Our analysis revealed several related results. First, caregivers often manipulated objects on the table (i.e., food and dishes), and toddlers were more likely than chance to use their...

School of Kinesiology professor, and director of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory, Thomas Stoffregen PhD, gave the keynote presentation, “Cybersickness: The method and the movement,” at the Workshop on Immersive Sickness Prevention (WISP). The WISP meeting was held virtually. The second annual workshop was held in tandem with the IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces on […]

School of Kinesiology professor, and director of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory, Thomas Stoffregen PhD, was cited in an article from The Economist, “Cyber-sickness Is Still A Challenge For VR”.  The article examined the two dominant hypotheses behind the triggers of VR cyber-sickness. One of which being Stoffregen’s theory of unstable posture. The article had a […]

Christopher Curry, Ruixuan Li, Nicolette Peterson, and Thomas A. Stoffregen, PhD, co-published an article titled, “Cybersickness in Virtual Reality Head-Mounted Displays: Examining the Influence of Sex Differences and Vehicle Control” published in the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction.  The study noted past research stating motion sickness is more common among women, and motion sickness in […]