THE ROLE OF MOVEMENT GAMES IN THE EDUCATION OF SPEED INDICES IN THE PRE-UNIVERSITY SYSTEM

Exercise games form basic motor knowledge, skills and abilities such as: walking correctly, running economically, jumping and throwing efficiently, while developing the basic motor skills needed in daily life or for subsequent sports. The aim of the research is the possibility to educate the motor quality, speed, through the introduction in the didactic projects of some dynamic and varied movement games at the level of the schoolchildren, which determine an increase of the general motor skills. A good selection of them and properly directed, they present an important means of psycho-physical development of the individual, the formation of motor and volitional qualities, as well as the strengthening of health.

The Aesthetics of Action and Movement

The embodied simulation account proposed a pivotal role for the body of an observer in the aesthetic perception of artworks. Beginning with this consideration, this chapter briefly outlines evidence from experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience that supports this proposed relationship between the human body and motor knowledge and aesthetic appraisal of action. The chapter focuses on the cognitive processes involved in perceiving a moving body and aesthetic estimation. It also discusses the impact of visuomotor expertise in shaping different levels of action representation and relative hedonistic judgment. While this research field remains somewhat in its naissance, alternative accounts have also been proposed to account for the link between embodiment, expertise, and movement aesthetics, which are also considered here. The chapter concludes with some theoretical and methodological considerations, questions, and perspectives that warrant further attention in future studies to expand existing knowledge on the empirical aesthetics of the human body in action.

Grasping with the eyes

When observing someone else acting on an object, people implement goal-specific eye movement programs that are driven by their own motor representation of the observed action. Usually, however, we observe people acting in contexts where more objects, different in shape and size, are present. Is our brain able to select the intended target even when there are different objects in the visual scene? And if this is the case, what kind of information does our motor system capitalize on? We recorded eye movements while participants observed an actor reaching for and grasping one of two objects requiring two different kinds of grip to be picked up. In a control condition, the actor merely reached for and touched one of the two objects without preshaping her hand according to the target features. Results showed higher accuracy and earlier saccadic movements when participants observed an actually grasping hand than when they observed a mere reaching hand devoid of any kind of target-related preshaping. This clearly suggests that the hand preshaping provided the observer with enough motor cues to proactively and reliably saccade toward the object to be grasped, thus identifying it even when the action target was not previously known. Our findings strongly corroborate the direct matching hypothesis suggesting that in processing others' actions, we take advantage of the same motor knowledge that enables us to efficiently perform those actions.