Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences

In this paper we survey three facets of human motor behavior - phenomena, theories, and implementations. We are particularly concerned with motor behavior that exhibits improvements over time and practice; this is referred to as human motor learning. We begin by discussing both performance and learning phenomena that have been observed repeatedly in laboratory situations. This is followed with a review of three prominent theories of human motor control from the psychological literature. These phenomena serve as a foundation on which to compare these theories. Finally, we consider several implemented models of motor learning that have attended to constraints imposed either by the phenomena introduced earlier, or by the physiological structure of the human neuro-muscular system. From the material surveyed, we conclude that more research on computational models would help answer remaining open questions in human motor behavior.