Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Recent data from spinal frogs and mammals suggests that movements may be constiucted fiom a standard set of primitives which represent postures and force patterns around postures. These postural primitives may be combined for movement synthesis and may also interact non-linearly. New data shows that the set of primitives may also contain of a collection of members which encapsulate aspects of movement control and dynamics. The linear interactions, non-linear interactions, and dynamic controls provide a means of bootstrapping motor learning. The non-linear interactions enable a basic pattern generator and a reflex functionality which can be parameterized and modified for elaboration of more complex behaviors.