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Thomas Stoffregen, Ph.D. Professor, School of Kinesiology E-mail: tas@umn.edu

Research Interests:

The perceptual guidance of action, and the use of motor activity to obtain perceptual information are two of the central aspects of animate behavior. Even one-celled organisms perceive to move, and move to perceive. Research on relations between perception and action is relatively recent in the behavioral sciences, and I contribute to research in this area. My focus is on the integration of perception and action in the context of meaningful behaviors. Relations between properties of the environment and properties of the organism have consequences for behavior. These relations, known as affordances, are directly relevant to the success of our interactions with the environment and, accordingly, perception and action should be concentrated on learning about affordances and on the use of affordances to achieve behavioral goals.

My lab has two main lines of research. The first concerns the role of exploratory movement in the perception of affordances, and is intimately related to the emerging field of Embodied Cognition. Research on embodied cognition offers a means to understand the recent explosion of discoveries relating to plasticity in the nervous system, and one of my aims is to develop this link through collaborative research at the boundary of behavioral science and neuroscience.

Our second focus is on relations between perception and action in motion sickness. Motion sickness is increasingly common among users of virtual environments and simulators, and among the millions of children and adults who play video games. We are evaluating a new theory of motion sickness etiology, which focuses on postural instability as the causal agent.

Selected Publications:

(For a comprehensive list of recent publications, refer to PubMed, a service provided by the National Library of Medicine.)

Faugloire E, Bonnet CT, Riley MA, Bardy BG, Stoffregen TA. Motion sickness, body movement, and claustrophobia during passive restraint. Exp Brain Res. 2007 Mar;177(4):520-32.

Stoffregen TA, Bardy BG, Bonnet CT, Hove P, Oullier O. Postural sway and the frequency of horizontal eye movements. Motor Control. 2007 Jan;11(1):86-102.

Prado JM, Stoffregen TA, Duarte M. Postural sway during dual tasks in young and elderly adults. Gerontology. 2007;53(5):274-81.

Merhi, O., Faugloire, E., Flanagan, M., & Stoffregen, T. A. (2007).
Motion sickness, console video games, and head mounted displays. Human Factors, 49, 920-934.

Bardy, B. G., Oullier, O., Lagarde, J., & Stoffregen, T. A. (2007). On perturbation and pattern co-existence in postural coordination dynamics. Journal of Motor Behavior, 39, 326-334.

Stoffregen, T. A., Hove, P., Bardy, B. G., Riley, M. A., Bonnet, C. T.
(2007). Postural stabilization of perceptual but not cognitive performance. Journal of Motor Behavior, 39, 126-138.

Faugloire, E., Bardy, B. G., & Stoffregen, T. A. (2006). The dynamics of learning new postural patterns. Journal of Motor Behavior, 38, 299-312.

Bonnet, C. T., Faugloire, E. M., Riley, M. A., Bardy, B. G., & Stoffregen, T. A. (2006). Motion sickness preceded by unstable displacements of the center of pressure. Human Movement Science, 25, 800-820.

Stoffregen, T. A., Bardy, B. G., & Mantel, B. (2006). Affordances in the design of Enactive systems. Virtual Reality, 10, 4-10.

Faugloire, E., Bardy, B. G., Merhi, O., & Stoffregen, T. A. (2005).
Exploring coordination dynamics of the postural system with real-time visual feedback. Neuroscience Letters, 374, 136-141.

Stoffregen, T. A., Yang, C. M., & Bardy, B. G. (2005). Affordance judgments and nonlocomotor body movement. Ecological Psychology, 17, 75-104.