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Dexterity
Fine motor skill (or dexterity) is the coordination of small muscles in movement with the eyes, hands and fingers. The complex levels of manual dexterity that humans exhibit can be related to the nervous system. Fine motor skills aid in the growth of intelligence and develop continuously throughout the stages of human development. Types of motor skills Motor skills are movements and actions of the bone structures. Typically, they are categorised into two groups: gross motor skills and fine motor skills. Gross motor skills are involved in movement and coordination of the arms, legs, and other large body parts. They involve actions such as running, crawling and swimming. Fine motor skills are involved in smaller movements that occur in the wrists, hands, fingers, feet and toes. Specifically, single joint movements are fine motor movements and require fine motor skills. They involve smaller actions such as picking up objects between the thumb and finger, writing carefully, and bl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Box And Blocks Test
The Box and Blocks Test is a functional test used in upper limb rehabilitation. The test is used to measure the gross manual dexterity of a patient, or of a person using an upper limb prosthetic device. The test consists of a box with a partition in the middle. Blocks are placed at one side of the partition. The box is placed at a table. The test subject is seated, facing towards the box. During the tests the test subject is given 60 seconds to move as many blocks as possible from one side to the other, by using only his tested hand. The tested hand can be either the subjects own hand or a prosthetic device operated by the subject. The number of displaced blocks is a measure of the gross manual dexterity. A higher number of displaced blocks indicates a better gross dexterity. The outcome can be compared to reference values of healthy test subjects, or reference values of tests performed with a prosthesis. The Box and Blocks Test enables measuring progress of gross hand dexterity dur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francisco Valero-Cuevas
Francisco Javier Valero-Cuevas (born 1964) is an engineer of Mexican origin, and a Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, and Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California. He is known for his work on how the human hand works, and its clinical applications. He is notable for several inventions, including devices for measuring hand function and leg function, and the construction of archways in civil engineering. Among his scholarly contributions is a textbook on the mathematical foundations underlying the study of motor control and biomechanics. He is an Elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (2014), an Elected Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellow. Education Francisco Valero-Cuevas graduated from Swarthmore College in 1988 with a BS in Engineering. As a Thomas J. Wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Purdue Pegboard Test
The Purdue Pegboard Test is a psychomotor test of manual dexterity and bimanual coordination. The test involves two different abilities: gross movements of arms, hands, and fingers, and fine motor extremity, also called "fingerprint" dexterity. Poor Pegboard performance is a sign of deficits in complex, visually guided, or coordinated movements that are likely mediated by circuits involving the basal ganglia. History Dr. Joseph Tiffin, an Industrial Psychologist at Purdue University, designed the test in 1948. It was originally intended for assessing the dexterity of assembly line workers. Method and interpretation The pegboard consists of a board with two parallel rows with 25 holes into which cylindrical metal pegs are placed by the examinee. The test involves a total of four trials. To begin, there is a brief practice. The subsets for preferred, non-preferred, and both hands require the patient to place the pins in the holes as quickly as possible, with the score being the num ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Handedness
In human biology, handedness is an individual's preferential use of one hand, known as the dominant hand, due to it being stronger, faster or more dextrous. The other hand, comparatively often the weaker, less dextrous or simply less subjectively preferred, is called the non-dominant hand. In a study from 1975 on 7688 children in US grades 1-6, Left handers comprised 9.6% of the sample, with 10.5% of male children and 8.7% of female children being left-handed. Handedness is often defined by one's writing hand, as it is fairly common for people to prefer to do some tasks with each hand. There are examples of true ambidexterity (equal preference of either hand), but it is rare—most people prefer using one hand for most purposes. Most of the current research suggests that left-handedness has an epigenetic marker—a combination of genetics, biology and the environment. Because the vast majority of the population is right-handed, many devices are designed for use by right-han ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Motor Skill
A motor skill is a function that involves specific movements of the body's muscles to perform a certain task. These tasks could include walking, running, or riding a bike. In order to perform this skill, the body's nervous system, muscles, and brain have to all work together. The goal of motor skill is to optimize the ability to perform the skill at the rate of success, precision, and to reduce the energy consumption required for performance. Performance is an act of executing a motor skill or task. Continuous practice of a specific motor skill will result in a greatly improved performance, which leads to Motor Learning. Motor learning is a relatively permanent change in the ability to perform a skill as a result of continuous practice or experience. Types of motor skills Motor skills are movements and actions of the muscles. There are two major groups of motor skills: * Gross motor skills – require the use of large muscle groups in our legs, torso, and arms to perform tasks suc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bone Structure
The human skeleton is the internal framework of the human body. It is composed of around 270 bones at birth – this total decreases to around 206 bones by adulthood after some bones get fused together. The bone mass in the skeleton makes up about 14% of the total body weight (ca. 10–11 kg for an average person) and reaches maximum density around age 21. The human skeleton can be divided into the axial skeleton and the appendicular skeleton. The axial skeleton is formed by the vertebral column, the rib cage, the skull and other associated bones. The appendicular skeleton, which is attached to the axial skeleton, is formed by the shoulder girdle, the pelvic girdle and the bones of the upper and lower limbs. The human skeleton performs six major functions: support, movement, protection, production of blood cells, storage of minerals, and endocrine regulation. The human skeleton is not as sexually dimorphic as that of many other primate species, but subtle differences be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nervous System
In biology, the nervous system is the highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its actions and sensory information by transmitting signals to and from different parts of its body. The nervous system detects environmental changes that impact the body, then works in tandem with the endocrine system to respond to such events. Nervous tissue first arose in wormlike organisms about 550 to 600 million years ago. In vertebrates it consists of two main parts, the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). The CNS consists of the brain and spinal cord. The PNS consists mainly of nerves, which are enclosed bundles of the long fibers or axons, that connect the CNS to every other part of the body. Nerves that transmit signals from the brain are called motor nerves or '' efferent'' nerves, while those nerves that transmit information from the body to the CNS are called sensory nerves or '' afferent''. Spinal nerves are mixed nerves that serv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peripheral Nervous System
The peripheral nervous system (PNS) is one of two components that make up the nervous system of bilateral animals, with the other part being the central nervous system (CNS). The PNS consists of nerves and ganglia, which lie outside the brain and the spinal cord. The main function of the PNS is to connect the CNS to the limbs and organs, essentially serving as a relay between the brain and spinal cord and the rest of the body. Unlike the CNS, the PNS is not protected by the vertebral column and skull, or by the blood–brain barrier, which leaves it exposed to toxins. The peripheral nervous system can be divided into the somatic nervous system and the autonomic nervous system. In the somatic nervous system, the cranial nerves are part of the PNS with the exception of the optic nerve (cranial nerve II), along with the retina. The second cranial nerve is not a true peripheral nerve but a tract of the diencephalon. Cranial nerve ganglia, as with all ganglia, are pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aptitude
An aptitude is a component of a competence to do a certain kind of work at a certain level. Outstanding aptitude can be considered "talent". Aptitude is inborn potential to perform certain kinds of activities, whether physical or mental, and whether developed or undeveloped. Aptitude is often contrasted with skills and abilities, which are developed through learning. The mass term ability refers to components of competence acquired through a combination of both aptitude and skills. According to Gladwell (2008) and Colvin (2008), it is often difficult to set apart the influence of talent from the influence of hard training in the case of outstanding performances. Howe, Davidson, and Sloboda argue that talents are acquired rather than innate. Talented individuals generally show high levels of competence immediately in only a narrow range of activities, often comprising only a single direction or genre. Intelligence and aptitude Aptitude and IQ are different but related con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Depth Perception
Depth perception is the ability to perceive distance to objects in the world using the visual system and visual perception. It is a major factor in perceiving the world in three dimensions. Depth perception happens primarily due to stereopsis and accommodation of the eye. Depth sensation is the corresponding term for non-human animals, since although it is known that they can sense the distance of an object, it is not known whether they perceive it in the same way that humans do. Depth perception arises from a variety of depth cues. These are typically classified into binocular cues and monocular cues. Binocular cues are based on the receipt of sensory information in three dimensions from both eyes and monocular cues can be observed with just one eye. Binocular cues include retinal disparity, which exploits parallax and vergence. Stereopsis is made possible with binocular vision. Monocular cues include relative size (distant objects subtend smaller visual angles than ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spatial Awareness
Spatial contextual awareness consociates contextual information such as an individual's or sensor's location, activity, the time of day, and proximity to other people or objects and devices.Chen, Guanling, and David Kotz. 2000. A Survey of Context-Aware Mobile Computing Research. Dartmouth Computer Science Technical Report TR2000-381. It is also defined as the relationship between and synthesis of information garnered from the spatial environment, a cognitive agent, and a cartographic map. The spatial environment is the physical space in which the orientation or wayfinding task is to be conducted; the cognitive agent is the person or entity charged with completing a task; and the map is the representation of the environment which is used as a tool to complete the task.Freksa, Christian, Alexander Klippel, and Stephan Winter. 2005. A Cognitive Perspective on Spatial Context. Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings 05491. An incomplete view of spatial contextual awareness would render it as si ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
