Research interests
Our research focuses mainly on two areas: motor decision making and joint action. Research in both fields is grounded on the concept of embodiment and targets the question of how movements are coordinated to account for the dynamics and uncertainties in the environment. In that context, we are especially interested in the interplay of cognitive and motor processes and how movement coordination is affected by age-related changes in cognitive and motor functioning.
Below, a more detailled description of our research can be found.
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Research areas
Further research topics
Attention
Attention represents a fundamental cognitive process for our actions. In that context, we foucs on the influence of different attention phenomena, as well as the influence of age-related changes in selective attention on (joint) actions.
Physical activity
Physical activity is widely known to be a relevant factor influencing e.g. health, psychological well-being, quality of life, but importantly also cognitive and brain functions. In this line of research, we are interested in investigating the effect of life long physical activity on cognitive and motor functions.
Sequence learning
In everyday life, we often perceive and perform complex actions as sequences of single actions. Empirical evidence suggests a close relationship between age-related decrements in perceptual and motor sequence learning and age-related declines in cognitive functioning. Thus, sequence learning tasks are a very interesting experimental task for studying the interplay of cognitive and motor functions during movement production.
Our team
Prof. Dr. Melanie Krüger
Information to my person can be found here.
Vladena Bätge-Jahn
Research associate with a background in adult educational sciences and a research interest at an intersection of life-long learning and physical activity.
Alexander Pleger
Doctoral researcher in the field of "embodied decision making" with a special interest in action prediction and neurstimulation.
Jonah Feist
Student research assistent supporting research within the area of "collision avoidance in human locomotion".
Alumni
Research assistants:
- Anne-Sophie Salzmann (Jun 2022 - Jun 2023)
- Dr. Arash Mirifar (May 2021 - Apr 2023)
- Dr. Laura Schmitz (Oct 2020 - Apr 2022)
Student research assistants and interns:
- Ulrich Meyer (Oct 2022 - Mar 2023)
- Seike Jurisch (May 2021 - Jun 2022)
- Vincent Ermisch (Oct 2021 - Dec 2021)