Breanna E Studenka

Utah State University | USU · Department of Kinesiology and Health Science

Purpose: This study investigated the effects of flywheel squat training on lower body muscle function adaptations and sport-specific performance in collegiate club water polo players. Methods: Thirteen collegiate club water polo athletes (5 women, 8 men) performed flywheel squat training for 4 weeks. Isokinetic knee extension (KE) peak power (PP) a...

The clock variance of intervals produced by one finger is reduced when that finger taps along with another finger (termed the bimanual advantage). The multiple-timekeeper model proposes a coupling of internal clocks, leading to reduced clock variance for bimanual timing. Alternatively, reduced variance for bimanual timing could result from addition...

People adopt comfortable postures for the end states of motor actions (end-state comfort; Rosenbaum & Jorgensen, 1992). The choice to end comfortably often elicits adoption of uncomfortable beginning states, demonstrating that a sequence of movement is planned in advance of movement onset. Many factors influence the choice of comfortable end-state...

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit impairment in helping someone else with a motor action, which may arise from impairment in selecting and preparing motor responses. Five children with ASD and five typically developing children performed a cooperative motor planning task that required them to reach for, lift, and hand an object (...

Objectives: Long-term monitoring of concussion recovery requires time- and cost-effective methods. Physiologic complexity may be useful in evaluating visual-motor integration following concussion. The purpose of this study was to quantify the extent to which prior number of concussions influenced visual-motor tracking force complexity. Methods: Thi...

Although, event and emergent timings are thought of as mutually exclusive, significant correlations between tapping and circle drawing (Baer, Thibodeau, Gralnick, Li, & Penhune, 2013 Baer, L. H., Thibodeau, J. L. N., Gralnick, T. M., Li, K. Z. H., & Penhune, V. B. (2013). The role of musical training in emergent and event-based timing. Frontiers in...

The aim of the present experiment was to document the role of multiple internal clock mechanisms and external sources of temporal feedback on reducing timing variability when two fingers tap instead of one (a phenomenon known as the bimanual advantage). Previous research documents a reduction in timed interval variability when two effectors time in...

The aim of the present study was to document how differing motivational orientation profiles, situated within environmental constraints (i.e., a competitive and practice environments) influence the nonlinear variability of performance and subsequent retention of a visual motor tracking skill. Myriad research associates atypical nonlinear aspects of...

Background: Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have difficulty communicating with others nonverbally, via mechanisms such as hand gestures, eye contact and facial expression. Individuals with ASD also have marked deficits in planning future actions (Hughes, 1996), which might contribute to impairments in non-verbal communication. Perspec...

Purpose: To quantify differences in nonlinear aspects of performance on a seated visual-motor tracking task between clinically asymptomatic males and females with and without a self-reported mild traumatic brain injury history. Methods: Seventy-three individuals with a self-reported concussion history (age: 21.40 ± 2.25 years, mean ± SD) and 75...

Background: Children with ASD often exhibit repetitive and stereotyped behaviors as well as difficulty performing motor actions. Difficulty in performing actions may stem from resistance to formulating new motor plans (persisting with previous motor plans even when new plans are needed for efficient movement). The aim of this study was to document...

This study was conducted to determine whether a narrative intervention program that targeted the use of mental state and causal language resulted in positive gains in narrative production for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Five children (2 girls and 3 boys) who had been diagnosed with ASD participated in the study. Children ranged in...

Multiple processes support the persistent (learning) and transient (adaptive) change in behavior over time. We investigated whether practice and rest influence similarly the learning and adaptation of slow and fast frequency structures in isometric force tracking of pathways that varied in their regularity. Participants practiced 25 trials on each...

Synchronization of movement to a metronome is a well-studied task for both discretely and smoothly produced rhythmic movement. In particular, behavioral responses to unexpected changes in a regular metronome can reveal both the strength and the completeness of error correction mechanisms and temporal control. Clock-like control is exhibited by disc...

A goal of research on human perception and performance is to explore the relative importance of constraints shaping action selection. The present study concerned the relative importance of two constraints that have not been directly contrasted: (1) the tendency to grasp objects in ways that afford comfortable or easy-to-control final postures; and...

The bimanual advantage refers to the finding that tapping with two fingers on opposite hands exhibits reduced timing variability, as compared with tapping with only one finger. Two leading theories propose that the bimanual advantage results from the addition of either sensory (i.e., enhanced feedback) or cognitive (i.e., multiple timekeeper) proce...

Actions that are chosen have properties that distinguish them from actions that are not. Of the nearly infinite possible actions that can achieve any given task, many of the unchosen actions are irrelevant, incorrect, or inappropriate. Others are relevant, correct, or appropriate but are disfavored for other reasons. Our research focuses on the que...

Interpersonal motor interactions (joint-actions) occur on a daily basis. In joint-action situations, typically developing (TD) individuals consider the end-goal of their partner and adjust their own movements to accommodate the other person. The movement planning processes required for joint-action may, however, be difficult for individuals with an...

Interpersonal motor interactions (joint-action) occur on a daily basis. In joint-action situations, typically developing (TD) individuals consider the end-goal of their partner and adjust their own movements to accommodate the other person. The movement planning processes required for joint-action may, however, be difficult for individuals with an...

Movement planning in sequential tasks is revealed by grasping postures. We explored aspects of planning a sequential drawer opening and object manipulation task with regard to arm and torso postures. We conducted a detailed kinematic analysis of joint postures at the wrist, elbow, and shoulder for a one-grasp and a two-grasp sequence of movement. T...

An internal clock-like process has been implicated in the control of rhythmic movements performed for short (250-2,000 ms) time scales. However, in the past decade, it has been claimed that a clock-like central timing mechanism is not required for smooth cyclical movements. The distinguishing characteristic delineating clock-like (event) from non-c...

Over the last two decades, various measures of entropy have been used to examine the complexity of human postural control. In general, entropy measures provide information regarding the health, stability and adaptability of the postural system that is not captured when using more traditional analytical techniques. The purpose of this study was to e...

Sharing a drink or passing a tool to another person is frequently done in our daily lives. However, a second thought is rarely given about how the object should be handed; instead we pay attention to other factors (e.g., the company). This interaction (handing a tool to someone) is interesting, since it may give insight to how motor intentions are...

Differences in timing control processes between tapping and circle drawing have been extensively documented during continuation timing. Differences between event and emergent control processes have also been documented for synchronization timing using emergent tasks that have minimal event-related information. However, it is not known whether the o...

Accurate timing performance during auditory-motor synchronization has been well documented for finger tapping tasks. It is believed that information pertaining to an event in movement production aids in detecting and correcting for errors between movement cycle completion and the metronome tone. Tasks with minimal event-related information exhibit...

That individual timing variability is correlated across some tasks but not others has instigated the notion of distinct timing processes, referred to as 'event' timing and 'emergent' timing for tasks with and without salient events, respectively. The delineation of the event-emergent framework owes much to the circle drawing task as it can be perfo...

Author Summary A fundamental question in motor control research is whether distinct movement classes exist. Candidate classes are discrete and continuous movement. Discrete movements have a definite beginning and end, whereas continuous movements do not have such discriminable end points. In the past decade there has been vigorous, predominantly em...

Spectral power in the human data. The amount of spectral power in the human data as a function of instruction condition and frequency at the sub-harmonic (P[ω/2]) (left panel), the fundamental frequency (P[ω]) (middle panel), and the first super-harmonic (P[2ω]) (right panel). For the natural conditions, the data for the participants who adopted th...

Probability density distributions. The position and velocity axes are indicated in the lower right panel, and the extracted 3-bin summed probability values are provided for each distribution. (A) Probability density distributions of model simulations in the mono-stable regime (upper panel) and limit cycle regime (lower panel) at 0.5 Hz, 2.0 Hz, and...

Symmetry ratios in the mono-stable regime. The symmetry ratio of the simulated data in the mono-stable regime is presented as a function of parameter b and frequency. (0.76 MB TIF)

Goal frequency versus coefficient of variation. Note that in conditions where participants were slowing down, the CVs are plotted in the reverse order of which they were performed. (0.27 MB TIF)

Supporting information. (0.07 MB DOC)

Spectral power in the mono-sable regime. The amount of spectral power in the mono-stable regime as a function of parameter b and frequency at the sub-harmonic (P[ω/2]) (left panel), the fundamental frequency (P[ω]) (middle panel), and the first super-harmonic (P[2ω]) (right panel). (0.59 MB TIF)

Goal frequency versus observed frequency. Note that in conditions where participants were slowing down, the observed frequency values are plotted in the reverse order of which they were performed. (0.24 MB TIF)

Symmetry ratios of the human data. The average symmetry ratio for the participants (n = 8) adopting a ‘discrete’ motor solution (D; n = 4) and a ‘smooth’ motor solution (S; n = 4) in the natural condition as a function of frequency for the natural, discrete, and smooth condition (left, middle, and right panel, respectively). The vertical bars indic...

Goal frequency versus normalized mean squared jerk. Note that in conditions where participants were slowing down, the values of jerk are plotted in the reverse order of which they were performed. (0.27 MB TIF)

Goal frequency versus percentage of time to peak negative velocity. Note that in conditions where participants were slowing down, the values of percent time to peak negative velocity are plotted in the reverse order of which they were performed. (0.29 MB TIF)

It has been hypothesized that timing in tapping utilizes event timing; a clock-like process, whereas timing in circle drawing is emergent. Three experiments examined timing in tapping and circle drawing by the dominant and non-dominant hand. Participants were right-hand dominant college aged males and females. The relationship between variance and...

The notion that a limited number of ‘motor primitives’ underwrites complex (human) movements is pertinent to various theoretical perspectives on motor control. Consequently, motor primitives have been classified according to different (and often empirically driven) criteria. Departing from the perspective that dynamical systems are unambiguously de...

Thesis (M.S.)--Purdue University, 2004. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 56-59) Electronic reproduction.

Two different mechanisms for interval timing have been proposed, one requiring a cognitive representation of time for control of interval production (event timing), and another in which time is not directly controlled, but results from the control of movement (emergent timing; Robertson et al., 1999; Spencer et al., 2003; Zelaznik et al., 2005). Al...