Jarrod Blinch, Ph.D

Perception, Cognition, and Action Lab

Director: Dr. Jarrod Blinch

Location: Kinesiology & Sport Management, room 101

Lab Overview

The motor behavior lab studies human movement from cognitive psychology and neuroscience perspectives. Motor behavior research seeks to understand how the neuromuscular system accomplishes coordinated movements. Motor control requires an understanding of perception, information processing/dynamical systems, neuroanatomy, and biomechanics. It is a diverse field with researchers in Engineering, Kinesiology, Psychology, and Neuroscience faculties. Understand how we make movements could help people with movement disorders. Examples of the applications of motor control to movement disorders include stroke, autism spectrum disorder, and Parkinson's disease.

Lab Equipment

The principle equipment in the perception, cognition, and action lab is a motion capture system that allows us to precisely track the intricate movements of the hands and arms. It is a research-grade version of the technology used to capture the movements of actors for video games or films like Thanos and Hulk in the Avengers, the Na'vi in Avatar, the apes in Dawn of the Planet of the Ape, and Gollum in Lord of the Rings.

Recent Findings

Blinch, J., Trovinger, C., DeWinne, C. R., de Cellio Martins, G., Ifediora, C. N., Nourollahimoghadam, M., Harry, J. R., & Palmer, T. B. (in press). Tradeoffs of estimating reaction time with absolute and relative thresholds. Behavior Research Methods.

Blinch, J., Harry, J. R., Hart, M. A., & Cousineau, D. (2022). Examining the Mechanisms of Internal and External Focus of Attention With Donders' Subtractive Method.Motor Control, 26(3), 378-395.

Blinch, J., Holmes, J., Cameron, B. D., & Chua, R. (2021). Investigating information processing of the bimanual asymmetric cost with the response priming technique.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 47(5), 673.

Blinch, J., & DeWinne, C. R. (2019). Pre-crastination and procrastination effects occur in a reach-to-grasp task.Experimental Brain Research, 237, 1129-1139.

Fall 2023 Team