Physics and Psychology of the Muscle Sense (Dynamic Touch)

The sensibility associated with muscles contributes little to the conceptual content of current psychology. In part, it is because losing the muscle sense is neither easily imagined nor easily simulated compared to losing sight, hearing, smell, etc. In part, it is because the perceptual achievements of muscular origin often lack words to describe them and frequently go unnoticed. The research of Turvey and colleagues has disclosed a rich variety of muscle-based perceptual capabilities—relating to held objects, probed objects, and body segments—that seem to be specific to invariant quantifiers of how the mass of an object or limb is distributed. The conceptual and technical issues posed by these capabilities provide new test fields for inquiry into the general problems of space perception, action, and selective attention.

Carello, C. & Turvey, M. T. (2004). Physics and psychology of the muscle sense. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13, 25-28.

Shockley, K., Carello, C., & Turvey, M. T. (2004). Metamers in the haptic perception of heaviness and moveable-ness. Perception and Psychophysics, 66, 731-742.

Carello, C., Kinsella-Shaw, J., Amazeen, E., & Turvey, M. T. (2006). Peripheral neuropathy and object length perception by effortful (dynamic) touch: A case study. Neuroscience Letters, 405, 159-163.

Hajnal, A., Fonseca, S., Kinsella-Shaw, J., Silva, P., Carello, C., & Turvey, M. T. (2007). Haptic selective attention by foot and by hand. Neuroscience Letters, 419, 5-9.

Phonological Basis of Visual Word Recognition (Reading)

Turvey and colleagues have been pursuing what Al Liberman referred to as “the seemingly sensible strategy for the reader,” namely, to use the optical shapes to access phonological structures early in the reading process. The reason being that once the reader has done that, he has put the hard part of reading behind him “for everything else will be done automatically by language processes that he commands by virtue of his humanity.” The significance of phonology to the reading process has often been downplayed under the assumption that reading is fundamentally a visual process. The work of Turvey and colleagues prior to 1998 provided important demonstrations, using highly sensitive, fast time-scale masking procedures, that phonology plays a leading not subsidiary role in visual word recognition. A summary of that 25 year long enterprise was published as a 1998 Science Watch article in American Psychologist. In recent years the research has graduated from the question of “What is the time scale of phonological mediation?” to “What is the form of the mediating phonology?” The gathering results are suggesting that the answer may be “gestural phonology.”

Lee, C., & Turvey, M. T. (2003). Silent letters and phonological priming. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 32, 313-333.

Lukatela, G., Eaton, T., Sabadini, L. & Turvey, M. T. (2004). Vowel duration affects visual word identification: Evidence that the mediating phonology is phonetically informed. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 30, 151-162.

Gallantucci, B., Fowler, C., & Turvey, M. T. (2006). The motor theory of speech perception reviewed. Pyschonomics Bulletin and Review, 13, 361-377.

Lee, Y., Moreno. M., Park, H., Carello, C., & Turvey (2006). Phonological assimilation and visual word recognition. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 35, 513-530.

Lukatela, G., Eaton, T., Moreno, M., & Turvey, M. T. (2007). Equivalent inter- and intra-modality long-term priming: Evidence for a common lexicon for words seen and words heard. Memory & Cognition, 35, 781-800.

Dynamics and Symmetries of Movement Coordination

Turvey and colleagues pioneered the dynamics/self-organizing approach to coordination in the late 1970s and early 1980s. That approach now has a strong foothold in the sciences of movement. The research effort in the past 5 years has been aimed at (a) expanding the nonlinear tools for investigating coordination patterns especially in respect to quantifying attractors, their strength, and associated noise, (b) examining the relation between parallel cognitive activity and coordination dynamics, (c) pursuing invariants /symmetries that apply “globally” to the coordination regardless of local neuromuscular/biomechanical conditions, and (d) extending the lessons of interlimb coordination to postural control.

Kay, B., Turvey, M. T., & Meier, O. (2003). An early oscillator mechanism: Studies in the biodynamics of the piano strike (Bernstein & Popova, 1930). Motor Control, 7, 1-45.

Turvey, M. T. (2003). Preface to N. Bernstein's “On dexterity and its development.” (Japanese translation). Tokyo.

Mitra, S., & Turvey, M. T. (2004). A rotation invariant in three-dimensional reaching. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 30, 63-79.

Balasubramaniam, R., & Turvey, M. T. (2004). Coordination modes in the multisegmental dynamics of hula hooping. Biological Cybernetics, 90, 176-190.

Amazeen, P., Amazeen, E., & Turvey, M. T. (2004). Symmetry and the devil. Journal of Motor Behavior, 36, 371-372.

Pellecchia, G., Shockley, K., & Turvey, M. T. (2005). Concurrent cognitive task modulates coordination dynamics. Cognitive Science, 29, 531-557.

Shockley, K., & Turvey, M. T. (2005). Encoding and retrieval during bimanual rhythmic coordination. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Language, 31, 980-990.

Kudo, K., Park, H., Kay, B., & Turvey, M. T. (2006). Environmental coupling modulates the attractors of rhythmic coordination. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 32, 599-609.

Shockley, K., & Turvey, M. T. (2006). Dual-task influences on retrieval from semantic memory and coordination dynamics. Psychonomics Bulletin and Review, 13, 985-900.

Kinsella-Shaw, J., Harrison, S., Colon-Semenza, C., & Turvey, M. T. (2006). Effects of the visual environment on quiet standing by young and old adults. Journal of Motor Behavior, 38, 251-264.

Turvey, M. T. (2007). Action and perception at the level of synergies. Human Movement Science, 26, 657-697.

Silva, P., Moreno, M., Mancini, M., Fonseca, S., & Turvey, M. T. (2007). Steady-state stress at one hand magnifies the amplitude, stiffness, and non-linearity of oscillatory behavior at the other hand. Neuroscience Letters, 429, 64-68.

Park, H., & Turvey, M. T. (2008). Imperfect symmetry and the elementary coordination law. In A. Fuchs, V.K. Jirsa (Eds.), Coordination: Neural, Behavioral and Social Dynamics (pp. 3-25). Berlin: Springer.

Ecological Optics and Acoustics

Issues of the optical and acoustical variables that appropriately constrain actions complement the larger investigation of the mechanical variables underlying haptic (dynamic touch) constraints. The past 5 years have emphasized the directing of locomotion and the possibility of acoustic variables that specify spatial properties of sound-producing events.

Fajen, B. & Turvey, M. T. (2003). Perception, categories and possibilities for action: comment on Beer. Adaptive Systems, 11, 276-278.

Carello, C., Wagman, J. B., & Turvey, M. T. (2005). Acoustic specification of object properties. In J. Anderson and B. Anderson (Eds.), Moving image theory: Ecological considerations (pp. 79-104). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

Fajen, B., Riley, M. R., & Turvey, M. T. (in press, 2008). Information, affordances and control of action in sports. International Journal of Sports Psychology.

Theory: Ecological Approach and Self-Organization

Turvey has continued his efforts at theory development in respect to Gibson's ecological approach and self-organization as the theory constitutive metaphor for embodied, embedded cognition. The major achievements of the past 5 years include extending the enterprise to standard information-processing phenomena, exploring the logic of impredicative definitions for systems that `assemble themselves', and examining quantum formalism as a tool for explication of the affordance concept.

Carello, C., & Turvey, M. T. (2003). The ecological approach to perception. Encyclopedia of cognitive science. London: Nature Publishing Group.

Van Orden, G., Holden, J., & Turvey, M. T. (2003). Self-organization of cognitive performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 132, 331-351.

Turvey, M. T. (2004). Space (and its perception): The first and final frontier. Ecological Psychology, 16, 25-29.

Turvey, M. T. (2004) Impredicativity, dynamics, and the perception-action divide. In V. K. Jirsa & J. A. S. Kelso (Eds.), Coordination Dynamics: Issues and Trends. Vol.1 Applied Complex Systems New York: Springer Verlag.

Van Orden, G., Holden, J., & Turvey, M. T. (2005). Human cognition and 1/f scaling. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 134, 117-123.

Carello, C., & Turvey, M. T. (2005). Symmetry and duality. Ecological Psychology, 17, 131-133.

Turvey, M. T. (2005). Theory of Brain and Behavior in the 21^st Century: No Ghost, No Machine. Japanese Journal of Ecological Psychology, 2, 69-79.

Turvey, M. T., & Moreno, M. (2006). Physical metaphors for the mental lexicon. The Mental Lexicon, 1, 7-33.

Chemero, A., & Turvey, M. T. (2007). Complexity, hypersets, and the ecological approach to perception-action. Biological Theory, 2, 23-36.

Chemero, A., & Turvey, M. T. (2007). Autonomy and hypersets. Biosystems.

Chemero, A., & Turvey, M. T. (2007). Gibsonian affordances for roboticists. Adaptive Behavior, 15, 473-480.

Rhodes, T. & Turvey, M. T. (2007). Human memory retrieval as Lévy foraging. Physica A, 385, 255-260.

Stepp. N., & Turvey, M. T. (2008). Anticipating synchronization as an alternative to the internal model. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31, 216-217.

Stephen, D. G., Stepp, N., Dixon, J. A., & Turvey, M. T. (2008). Strong anticipation: Sensitivity to long-range correlations in synchronization behavior. Physica A.