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Herbert L. Pick, Jr.Professor Office: 206B Child Development Perceptual development, learning and cognition |
My research is concerned with spatially coordinated behavior, broadly construed. My colleagues and I are particularly interested in the ways one combines sensory and cognitive skills to accomplish behavior in the spatial environment.
On the cognitive side, some investigations are focused on the way children and adults organize their spatial knowledge and how they use that knowledge for finding their way and for giving spatial directions to others. One new aspect of this work is a study of how elderly drivers maintain their orientation and find their way to new locations. Investigation of the combining of cognitive and sensory skills is exemplified by research on how children use photographs and models of spatial layout to help guide subsequent searches in the actual layout.
On the sensory and perceptual side, a central question in my research is the identification of information for guiding locomotion. One experimental approach involves altering the normal relation between movement through the environment and biomechanical effort such as happens when walking on a people conveyor at an airport or walking on an escalator. Such experience results in a recalibration between motor output and visual distance.
Recent publications
Bruggeman, H. , Pick, H. L. Jr. & Rieser J. J. (2005). Learning to throw on a rotating carousel: Recalibration based on limb dynamics and projectile kinematics. Experimental Brain Research 163, 188-197.
Pick, H. L. Jr. (2004) Interrelation of Perception, Action, and Cognition in Development: An Historical Perspective. In I. Stockman (Ed.) Movement and Action in Learning and Development pp 33-48. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Pick, H. L. Jr. (2003). Development and learning: An historical perspective on acquisition of motor control. Infant Behavior and Development 26, 441‑448.
Rieser, J.J. and Pick, H.L. Jr. (2002). The Perception and Representation of Human Locomotion. In W. Prinz and B. Hommel (Eds.), Attention and Performance XIX: Common Mechanisms in Perception and Action Attention and performance XIX. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Pick, H.L., Jr. (2002). Mental maps. In W. Kintsch (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences
Manning, C., Sera, M,, & Pick, H. L. Jr. (2002). Understanding how we think about space: An examination of the meaning of English spatial prepositions. In: K.R.Coventry & P. Olivier (Eds.): Spatial Language Cognitive and Computational Perspectives pp. 147 ‑ 164. Dordrecht, NL: Kiuwer Academic Publishers.
Schwebel, D. C., Plumert, J. M., & Pick, H. L., Jr. (2000). Integrating basic and applied developmental research. Child Development 71, 222‑230.
Pick, H. L., Jr., Rieser, J. J., Wagner, D., & Ganng, A. E. (1999). The recalibration of rotational locomotion. Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception and Performance 25, 1179‑1188.