How humans plan and execute their actions has always been a fascinating topic for neuroscience and psychology. In particular, kinematics studies have contributed to shed light on how very basic actions (e.g. reaching-grasping) are affected by manipulating target properties, visually or linguistically presented stimuli, absence or presence of contextual information. Interestingly, recent studies have also shown how the social context in which actions take place and their relevance for human interactions can also affect the execution of very simple actions. This research topic aims to bring together researchers from psychology and neuroscience with a special focus on the use of kinematics analysis for the study of socially relevant aspects of cognition (e.g. action observation, competition/cooperation, complementary actions, coordination, shared emotions and so on).

Motor skills are a vital part of healthy development and are featured prominently both in physical examinations and in parents’ baby diaries. It has been known for a long time that motor development is critical for children’s understanding of the physical and social world. Learning occurs through dynamic interactions and exchanges with the physical and the social world, and consequently movements of eyes and head, arms and legs, and the entire body are a critical during learning. At birth, we start with relatively poorly developed motor skills but soon gain eye and head control, learn to reach, grasp, sit, and eventually to crawl and walk on our own. The opportunities arising from each of these motor milestones are profound and open new and exciting possibilities for exploration and interactions, and learning. Consequently, several theoretical accounts of child development suggest that growth in cognitive, social, and perceptual domains are influences by infants’ own motor experiences. Recently, empirical studies have started to unravel the direct impact that motor skills may have other domains of development. This volume is part of this renewed interest and includes reviews of previous findings and recent empirical evidence for associations between the motor domain and other domains from leading researchers in the field of child development. We hope that these articles will stimulate further research on this interesting question.

Motor Control and Learning, Sixth Edition With Web Resource, focuses on observable movement behavior, the many factors that influence quality of movement, and how movement skills are acquired. The text examines the motivational, cognitive, biomechanical, and neurological processes of complex motor behaviors that allow human movement to progress from unrefined and clumsy to masterfully smooth and agile. This updated sixth edition builds upon the foundational work of Richard Schmidt and Timothy Lee in previous editions. The three new authors—each a distinguished scholar—offer a range and depth of knowledge that includes current directions in the field. The extensively revised content reflects the latest research and new directions in motor control and learning. Additional new features of the sixth edition include the following: • A web resource that includes narratives and learning activities from Motor Control in Everyday Actions that correspond with the chapters in the book, giving students additional opportunities to analyze how research in motor learning and control can be expanded and applied in everyday settings • An instructor guide that offers sample answers for the learning experiences found in the student web resource • New content on sleep and movement memory, the role of vision, illusions and reaching, the OPTIMAL theory of motor learning, the neuroscience of learning, and more Motor Control and Learning begins with a brief introduction to the field and an introduction to important concepts and research methods. Part II thoroughly covers motor control with topics such as closed-loop perspective, the role of the central nervous system for movement control, speed and accuracy, and coordination. Part III deals with motor learning, exploring the effects of attentional focus, the structure of practice sessions, the role of feedback, theoretical views of motor learning, and the retention and transfer of skills. Throughout the book, art and practical examples are included to elucidate complex topics. Sidebars with historical examples, classic research, and examples of real-world applications highlight the importance of motor control and learning research and bring attention to influential research studies and pioneers. End-of-chapter summaries and student assignments reinforce important concepts and terms and provide review opportunities. For instructors, an image bank complements the new instructor guide; it is available to course adopters at www.HumanKinetics.com/MotorControlAndLearning. The updated research, new features, and highly respected authors of Motor Control and Learning, Sixth Edition With Web Study Guide, provide a solid foundation for both students and practitioners who study and work in fields that encompass movement behavior.

Reaching for objects in our surroundings is an everyday activity that most humans perform seamlessly a hundred times a day. It is nonetheless a complex behavior that requires the perception of objects’ features, action selection, movement planning, multi-joint coordination, force regulation, and the integration of all of these properties during the actions themselves to meet the successful demands of extremely varied task goals. Even though reach-to-grasp behavior has been studied for decades, it has, in recent years, become a particularly growing area of multidisciplinary research because of its crucial role in activities of daily living and broad range of applications to other fields, including physical rehabilitation, prosthetics, and robotics. This volume brings together novel and exciting research that sheds light into the complex sensory-motor processes involved in the selection and production of reach-to-grasp behaviors. It also offers a unique life-span and multidisciplinary perspective on the development and multiple processes involved in the formation of reach-to-grasp. It covers recent and exciting discoveries from the fields of developmental psychology and learning sciences, neurophysiology and brain sciences, movement sciences, and the dynamic field of developmental robotics, which has become a very active applied field relying on biologically inspired models. This volume is a rich and valuable resource for students and professionals in all of these research fields, as well as cognitive sciences, rehabilitation, and other applied sciences.

This Research Topic is devoted to arm and hand movement in health as well as in several disease conditions. It is a collection of several original research papers and reviews, clinical case studies, hypothesis and theory articles, opinions, commentaries, and methods papers that cover some important aspects of the topic from distinct scientific perspectives. We invite the readers to appreciate the range in methodologies and experimental designs that together have led to widen our understanding of this especially broad field of research.

Understanding the link between individual behaviour and population organization and functioning has long been central to ecology and evolutionary biology. Behaviour is a response to intrinsic and extrinsic factors including individual state, ecological factors or social interactions. Within a group, each individual can be seen as part of a network of social interactions varying in strength, type and dynamic. The structure of this network can deeply impact the ecology and evolution of individuals, populations and species. Within a group social interactions can take many forms and may significantly affect an individual’s fitness. These interactions may result in complex systems at the group-level, such as in the case of collective decisions (to migrate, to build nest or to forage). Among them, social transmission of information has been studied mostly in vertebrates: fish, birds and mammals including humans. In insects, social learning has been unambiguously demonstrated in social Hymenoptera but this probably reflects limited research effort and recent evidence show that even non-eusocial insects such as Drosophila, cockroaches and crickets can copy the behaviour of others. Compared to individual learning, which requires a trial and error period every generation, social learning can potentially result in the stable transmission of behaviours across generations, leading to cultural traditions in some species. The study of the processes which may facilitate or prevent this transmission and the analyses of the relationship between social network structure and efficiency of social transmission became these recent years an emerging and promising field of research. The goal of this research topic is to present the genetic and socio-environmental factors affecting social interaction and information or pathogen transmission with the integration of experimental approaches, social network analyses and modelling. Importantly, we aim to understand whether a relationship between social network structures and dynamics can reflect the efficiency of social transmission, i.e. can we use social network analysis to predict the social transmission of information or of pathogen, collective decision-making and ultimately the evolutionary trajectory of a group?