Collaborative Research: Emergent motor timing influences perceptual timing

许多现实世界的行为，例如随着音乐节拍敲击、扔球或过马路，都依赖于感知、认知和运动动作之间的精确计时。幸运的是，我们的运动系统通常与我们的感知和认知过程无缝配合。尽管它们在现实世界中如何协同工作，但行为的这些方面在很大程度上是在实验室中单独研究的。虽然这种方法具有科学严谨性，并且为每个子系统提供了重要的见解，但它很少涉及它们的相互作用，而这可能是理解人类行为的基础。更好地理解知觉、认知和运动行为的时间方面如何相互关联也有可能推动技术创新，例如认知神经修复术，这是一种用于帮助瘫痪患者和截肢患者的新型人机界面。识别认知、知觉和运动功能之间的时间相互作用对于为运动和知觉时间受损的人群开发新的康复范例具有其他转化潜力。该研究计划旨在评估感知和运动控制的时序是否以及如何涉及确保无缝集成和塑料共同修改的共享机制。该实验方法将运动技能（在增强现实环境中扔球）与时间感知任务结合起来。目标 1 探讨离散投掷动作产生的运动计时如何改变感知计时。目标 2 将这个问题扩展到需要有节奏的投掷动作的情况。目标 3 检查运动和知觉计时的习得耦合是否长期持续存在。总而言之，这种理解感知和运动时序之间联系的定量方法将有助于在现实世界中开发统一的时序控制理论。女性调查员团队还确定了多项外展活动，以促进和交流科学研究与 STEM 教育的融合，并增加少数群体在认知、知觉和运动科学领域的代表性。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Many real-world behaviors, such as tapping to a musical beat, throwing a ball, or crossing the street, depend on precise timing among perception, cognition, and motor action. Luckily, our motor systems usually operate seamlessly in concert with our perceptual and cognitive processes. Despite how they work together in the real world, these aspects of behavior have been largely studied separately in the laboratory. While that approach allows scientific rigor and has provided significant insights into each subsystem, it says little about their interaction, which may be fundamental to understanding human behavior. A better understanding of how the temporal aspects of perceptual, cognitive, and motor behaviors are interrelated also has the potential to advance technological innovations, e.g., in cognitive neural prosthetics, a novel human-computer interface for helping paralyzed patients and patients with amputations. Identifying the temporal interactions among cognitive, perceptual, and motor functions has other translational potential for developing new rehabilitation paradigms for populations with impaired motor and perceptual timing. This research program aims to evaluate whether and how timing in perception and motor control involves shared mechanisms that ensure seamless integration and plastic co-modification. The experimental approach combines a motor skill, throwing a ball in an augmented reality environment, with a time perception task. Objective 1 explores how motor timing that emerges from discrete throwing actions modifies perceptual timing. Objective 2 extends this question to situations requiring rhythmic throwing actions. Objective 3 examines whether learned coupling of motor and perceptual timing persists in the longer term. Taken together, this quantitative approach to understanding the connections between perceptual and motor timing will contribute to developing a unified theory of timing control in real-world contexts. The female investigator team has also identified multiple outreach activities to foster and communicate the integration of scientific research and STEM education and to increase minority representation in the cognitive, perceptual, and motor sciences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.