Kognition und Motorik (Comode 3)

Kontakt:   Dr. Emily Meachon

Beteiligte Personen:
Prof. Dr. Alexander Grob
Dr. Emily Meachon
M.Sc. Agnes-Maria Detert

"To move is to progress - literally and figuratively." This was postulated by Renate Zimmer in one of her writings (2011), but this view goes back to the earliest theories of development, which emphasize a close link between motor skills and cognition (Piaget, 1952). While developmental psychologists have long been hesitant to investigate the link between motor development and cognition, there has been a recent increase in research on this topic (e.g., Adolph & Robinson, 2013). This supports early and targeted intervention for children and adolescents at risk in motor and/or cognitive domains. Moreover, these research findings are especially significant today, with an increase sedentary lifestyle and many children and adolescents lack sufficient physical activity (Manz et al., 2014). Therefore, we assess children’s and adolescents’ walking behaviors (GAITRite®, single layer pressure sensitive 7 meters walkway measuring temporal and spatial parameters) while they simultaneously complete cognitive tasks, i.e., executive functions, auditory and visual short term memory, or fine motor tasks, in order to study the dual- and triple task cost effects on gait. The results of this study advance theory in the domain of cognitive and motor development across the first few decades of life, and are useful in order to supporttargeted intervention in these domains at an early stage in life. In previous phases of this project, samples of typically-developed children and adults was recruited, as well as a sample of children with developmental disabilties. The next step will emphasize the recruitment and testing of adults who have various neurodevelopmental disorders and/or disorders of movement (i.e., Developmental Coordination Disorder; Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) to compare to the existing typically-developed groups. In this masters project, numerous standardized test procedures (e.g., motor or intelligence tests) as well as various modern technologies (e.g., precise gait analyses using the GaitRite system) are used.  Please note that in the event in-person testing is temporarily suspended due to the ongoing pandemic, it is possible to work with previously collected data and/or conduct releant online surveys to extend the project. These masters thesis projects will be carried out in English.

Essential tasks:

  • Opportunity to be involved in the preparation and design of experimental studies
  • Recruitment and testing participants
  • Data preparation, entry and analysis
  • General project tasks
  • Planning and conducting data analysis; at minimum: correlations; ANOVAs/t-tests 

Additional opportunities (as desired):

  • Involvement in the preparation and design of novel experimental studies
  • Opportunity to use various experimental methods (i.e., GaitRite; EEG; ongitive tasks; intelligence testing)
  • Option to use preferred software or learn various programs for running experiments and data analysis from supervisor (e.g., R, SPSS, Matlab, PsychoPy, OpenSesame, etc.)
  • Opportunity to be involved in the preparation and design of experimental studies
  • Advanced methodological approaches are welcomed and can be supported (e.g., moderation or mediation analyses; cogntive modelling; machine learning, etc.)