Research interests
Our research mainly focuses on two areas: motor decision making and interpersonal coordination in sport and movement. 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, please find a more detailled description of our research.
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Further research topics
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.
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.
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.
Our team
Prof. Dr. Melanie Krüger
Information to my person can be found here.
Alexander Pleger
Doctoral researcher in the field of "embodied decision making" with a special interest in action prediction and neurstimulation.
Alumni
Research assistants:
- Vladena Bätge Jahn (Mar 2022 - Sep 2024)
- 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:
- Elisa Ueding (Oct 2023 - Dec 2024)
- Jonah Feist (Oct 2022 - Dec 2024)
- Ulrich Meyer (Oct 2022 - Mar 2023)
- Seike Jurisch (May 2021 - Jun 2022)
- Vincent Ermisch (Oct 2021 - Dec 2021)