Stereotypical movements

A ‘stereotypical movement’ denotes a movement reproduced in a standardised form. The term is used in two fields, in movement science and in medical assessments of pathology. The former recognises the occurrence of regular patterns of movement across individuals expressed at regular points in development, such as the pre-reach in early infancy. The latter specifies a pathological form of repetitive movement by one individual symptomatic of, for example, autism. This entry explores the inter-individual use of the term in movement science and touches on ongoing work to better classify and quantify stereotypical movements for better psychophysiological understanding of action development, and possible sensitive measures of them

Theories of the development of human communication

This article considers evidence for innate motives for sharing rituals and symbols from animal semiotics, developmental neurobiology, physiology of prospective motor control, affective neuroscience and infant communication. Mastery of speech and language depends on polyrhythmic movements in narrative activities of many forms. Infants display intentional activity with feeling and sensitivity for the contingent reactions of other persons. Talk shares many of its generative powers with music and the other ‘imitative arts’. Its special adaptations concern the capacity to produce and learn an endless range of sounds to label discrete learned understandings, topics and projects of intended movement

The emotional & embodied nature of human understanding : making meaning in shared projects of discovery

This talk examines the emotional, embodied nature of human understanding before it achieves linguistic expression, as a route to understanding basic principles of social awareness, affective contact, and learning, and how to work with them

Estimation of starch in plant tissue

The various factors affecting the estimation of starch by determining the glucose formed by acid hydrolysis following enzymatic hydrolysis have been studied. The effect of grinding of the plant material was shown to be important. Insufficient grinding leads to low values in starch, and grinding in the ball mill caused a breakdown of starch, and probably of non-starch interfering substances, to more soluble material;Gelatinization is necessary to extract starch from plant tissue. Probably vigorous conditions are not needed, but autoclaving for one hour at 15 pounds had no detrimental effect on starch recovery;Salivary diastase is preferred to taka-diastase in the enzymatic digestion. It is better to use a short incubation time to decrease the danger of bacterial activity;Clearing of the enzymatic extracts is essential to remove certain interfering substances. Even when this is done, however, not all the interfering substances are removed and results are sometimes high. After clearing, it is necessary to delead. It is important not to use too large an excess of K2HPO 4 for this purpose;In the acid hydrolysis the HCl concentration must be kept lour enough so that the NaCl formed on neutralization will not give a high sugar titration. The condition necessary for complete hydrolysis is 1 + 80 HCl heated in an autoclave at 15 pounds pressure for 30--60 minutes;Certain optimum conditions were determined for the estimation of starch: (1) Grinding to pass through a 40 to 80 mesh screen; (2) Gelatinization in an autoclave for 30 minutes at 15 pounds pressure; (3) Incubation of the sample with +/-3ml of 50 percent saliva for two hours; (4) Clearing with lead acetate, filtering and deleading with a slight excess K2HPO 4; (5) Hydrolysis of the extract with 1 + 80 HCl at 15 pounds for 30--60 minutes;Determination of the reducing sugars formed

The emotional and embodied nature of human understanding : sharing narratives of meaning

This chapter explores the emotional and embodied nature of children’s learning to discover biological principles of social awareness, affective contact, and shared sense-making useful for school learning. The origins of learning are evident in purposeful movements of the body before birth. Simple self-generated actions learn to anticipate their sensory effects. In their action they generate a small ‘story’ that progresses through time, giving meaningful satisfaction on their successful completion. During child development, simple actions become organised into complex projects requiring greater appreciation of their consequences, expanding in capacity and reach. They are mediated first by brainstem conscious control made with vital feelings, which builds the foundations for a more abstract, cortically mediated cognitive intelligence in later life. By tracing development of meaning-making from simple projects of the infant to complex shared projects in early childhood, we can better appreciate the embodied narrative form of human understanding in healthy affective contact, how it may be disrupted in children with clinical disorders or educational difficulties, and how it responds in joyful projects to teachers’ support for learning

Design and assembly of a magneto-inertial wearable device for ecological behavioural analysis of infants

There are recent evidence which show how brain development is strictly linked to the action. Movements shape and are, in turn, shaped by cortical and sub-cortical areas. In particular spontaneous movements of newborn infants matter for developing the capability of generating voluntary skill movements. Therefore studying spontaneous infants’ movements can be useful to understand the main developmental milestones achieved by humans from birth onward. This work focuses on the design and development of a mechatronic wearable device for ecological movement analysis called WAMS (Wrist and Ankle Movement Sensor). The design and assembling of the device is presented, as well as the communication protocol and the synchronization with other marker-based optical movement analysis systems