ENHP’s Wininger Speaks at Nation’s Top-ranked Kinesiology Program

Michael Wininger

Michael Wininger, assistant professor in ENHP’s Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, delivered a colloquium at Pennsylvania State University in January. The invitation to share his research came from the Department of Kinesiology’s Action Club, which draws speakers from around the world to talk about human motor control.

Wininger describes the presentation as follows: Measuring motor skill is an integral aspect of our work as clinicians and researchers. We typically assume that movement smoothness is the best way to objectively measure skill, but we as a community lack a robust measure of smoothness. One widely used smoothness measure, that of “integrated jerk,” while used successfully in many studies, occasionally reveals a counter-intuitive behavior. In my talk, I identify one possible reason for this failure, namely that integrated jerk is posed as a function of time, which is a poorly controlled variable, and on which integrated jerk is highly (and spuriously!) correlated. I propose that re-formulating integrated jerk as a function of joint angle may be a suitable alternative. This presentation highlights previously published works including Wininger, J Biomechanics 2009, and Wininger, J Motor Behavior 2012.

Learn more about Michael Wininger’s work:

• Journal of Biomechanics Paper
• Journal of Motor Behavior Paper 
• Presentation at Penn State 

To contact Michael Wininger:
860.768.5787
wininger@hartford.edu