Biotechnology

This report will mainly reflect on the article “An examination of motor and perceptual contributions to the recognition of deception from others’ actions” from _Human Movement _Science, in terms of its discipline, context, purpose and results. The article relates to human intentions (deceptive or non-deceptive) which are reflected in movement and/or behaviour. The experiment described focuses strongly on human behaviour. For this reason, I believe that thisalls under the discipline of human uses strongly on human behaviour . For this reason, i believe is article falls under the discipline of psychology as it explores behavioural science. Additionally, the experiment examines movement and co-ordination; each handball player was required to perform 60 penalty shots which were recorded from both a frontal view and from the side in order to clearly distinguish deceptive from non-deceptive actions. Hence, the article may also fall under the discipline of physiology; mainly motor functions. Human Movement Science describes itself as “A Journal Devoted to Pure and Applied Research on Human Movement”. It is published by Elsevier, a leading publisher of science and health information headquartered in Amsterdam, thus targeting an international audience. Human Movement Science acts as a forum for psychological and biophysical research on human movement. It features studies on motor control and learning including the perceptual skills involved and relates this to applied studies in fields such as sport, dance and rehabilitation. The article I chose from this particular journal is a prime example of the types of work featured in Human Movement Science. “An examination of motor and perceptual contributions to the recognition of deception from others’ actions” looks at both the physiology of movement as well as the perceptual decisions and hence reflects the nature of the journal itself. The main purpose of this study was to examine both the physical and perceptual contributions to the recognition of deception. The article asserts that “Recognising deceptive intentions from others’ actions is important in human interaction”. An illustration used to justify this is the example of recognising whether someone is pulling out a gun or just reaching for their wallet. Thus, understanding behaviour and movement can help to make accurate judgements about the intention, whether it be deceptive or non-deceptive, of others. The experiment involved preparing a video stimulus of four skilled hand-ball players taking penalty shots. Each player performed 60 shots; 30 genuine shots, and 30 ‘deceptive’ or fake shots which involved only the throwing movement but no releasing of the ball. Video images were taken from two angles (front and side) and edited creating two blocks of clips for the side and front view with the deceptive and non-deceptive shots being randomised. 26 expert handball players, 19 expert handball goalkeepers and 20 novices were instructed to indicate whether the penalty taker in the video produced a true or a fake shot. Unfortunately, the results of the experiment as expressed in the article were very difficult to decipher. There were multiple references to the “motor experience hypothesis” as well as the “perceptual experience hypothesis”, neither of which were clearly explained. Consequently, this required further research (mainly through a quick internet search of the two hypothesises) in order to understand the context. However, even after my attempt to gain background knowledge, I could not fully comprehend the reasoning behind the final conclusions of this experiment. I believe this is purely due to my lack of scientific knowledge regarding this topic which was furthered by the complicated terminology used in the article. The conclusion of the experiment was however, that neither the perceptual nor the motor experience hypothesis can alone provide a comprehensive account for successful recognition of deceptive intentions. Perceptual and motor contributions seem to be intrinsically linked for these purposes.