VOLUME 30 , NUMBER 1 -January 1999

Under Rosenbaum, performance research to blend with perception

As editor, this motor-control expert will orchestrate harmony between two camps.

By Patrick A. McGuire
Monitor staff

The back edge of a violin, when placed regularly beneath the chin, will leave a slight red weal like the one on the left side of David Rosenbaum's neck above his shirt collar. Researchers in the field of perception and performance take note: That mark not only reveals Rosenbaum as a musician, it also contains an important clue as to what kind of researcher he is, and, for that matter, what kind of journal editor he is going to be.

This month, Rosenbaum, PhD, a professor of psychology at Pennsylvania State University, becomes the incoming editor of APA's Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance (JEP:HPP).

It's no coincidence that in the early 1970s, as a psychology graduate student, he gravitated to the study of human motor control. A student of the violin since age 9, he was fascinated by the whys and especially the hows of reaching and grasping-not just as they pertained to the playing of music, but to all aspects of human navigation through the physical environment.

In that field of action, there are two sometimes opposing camps: one explains the body's control of movement as a mainly cognitive or mentalistic process; the other ascribes control of bodily movement mainly to physics and influences of the environment.

Rosenbaum, author or co-author of four books and numerous articles and book chapters in the area of human motor control, sees himself first as a cognitive psychologist. But since his days as a student he has found much of value in the environmental-or ecological, as its proponents term it-viewpoint. He is the first motor-control expert to head this prestigious journal, a sign, he says, that the field now accepts the control of physical behavior as a worthy topic of investigation in experimental psychology.

In addition to promoting motor control research, he hopes to bring the cognitive and ecological approaches together. 'The real progress is going to be made by integrating the two views,' he says. 'And I want to welcome that kind of research.'

As a student, he found research in the field focused on perception, learning and memory, but not physical performance. Playing the violin, he says, helped trigger 'a feeling that cognitive psychology, which is the study of how the mind functions, needed to pay more attention to how we control the movements of our bodies.'

For without attending to action, he argues, 'we're not going to have a complete understanding of how the mind works. A key part of mental function is decision enactment. Arriving at decisions without attempting to enact those decisions leaves the organism lost in thought.'

The subtle differences between the two views amount to a debate over where most of the information to explain movement can be found. To the ecologically oriented, most of the information relevant for controlling action is found in the interaction between physical makeup of the body and the environment. To the cognitively oriented, most of the relevant information is stored in memory.

Take, for example, the way a leg gets swung during walking. 'For much of the time the leg is swinging it is moving like a pendulum,' says Rosenbaum. 'For that moment in time, it wouldn't matter if the actor were dead or alive. The mind is not controlling all aspects of behavior. Physics takes over.'

But a cognitively oriented person, he says, 'might look at the leg and say it's controlled by the brain, which is mapping out in detail each bit of leg behavior. It can't be that just one approach is right. Where we will make progress is looking at both.'

Rosenbaum says he will not limit articles to issues of motor control, and will accept papers representing all traditional topics, even those from strictly cognitive or ecological perspectives. Papers that merge the two, however, will be especially welcome.

He will also accept shorter articles than have appeared in the past, including single-experiment papers. 'I will continue to welcome papers that present a series of experiments,' he says, 'but we really would like papers that in one or two experiments can achieve what eight experiments would have demonstrated.'

This change, he hopes, will particularly encourage vision researchers-whose work often deals with single-experiments.

Rosenbaum is also implementing a process where students review journal articles. The move, he hopes, will demystify the journal, get students more involved and show them their views are taken seriously.

Under his plan, faculty would nominate select students, and Rosenbaum would approve them. Their reviews would supplement but never replace the three peer reviews currently solicited for each article, he emphasizes.

Rosenbaum also plans a book, examining in detail the publication process. It will consist of case studies of the submission, review and revision process for papers that appear in JEP:HPP during his tenure.

Manuscripts for JEP:HPP can be sent to Rosenbaum after Dec. 31 at the Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, 642 Moore Building, University Park, PA 16802-3104.

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