The consequences of sea lamprey parasitism on lake trout energy budgets.

Parasitism is an energetically costly event for host species. Dynamic energy budget (DEB) theory describes the metabolic dynamics of an individual organism through its lifetime. Models derived from DEB theory specify how an organism converts food to reserves (maintenance-free energy available for metabolism) and allocates mobilized reserves to maintenance, growth (increase of structural body mass) and maturation or reproduction.

Consistently modeling the same movement strategy is more important than model skill level in observational learning contexts.

The experiment undertaken was designed to elucidate the impact of model skill level on observational learning processes. The task was bimanual circle tracing with a 90° relative phase lead of one hand over the other hand. Observer groups watched videos of either an instruction model, a discovery model, or a skilled model.

Specificity in practice benefits learning in novice models and variability in demonstration benefits observational practice.

Considerable research has shown that both demonstration and verbal instruction can facilitate learning of a motor task in inexperienced individuals. In the current study, verbal instructions were used as a means to reduce the discovery learning process and control the amount of trial-to-trial variability in demonstrations. The task required models to learn to trace a pair of circles with a 90 degrees -relative phase pattern between the arms.

Transfer of movement sequences: bigger is better.

Experiment 1 was conducted to determine if proportional transfer from "small to large" scale movements is as effective as transferring from "large to small." We hypothesize that the learning of larger scale movement will require the participant to learn to manage the generation, storage, and dissipation of forces better than when practicing smaller scale movements. Thus, we predict an advantage for transfer of larger scale movements to smaller scale movements relative to transfer from smaller to larger scale movements.