Michael Turvey


Michael T. Turvey is the Board of Trustees' Distinguished Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Connecticut and a Senior Scientist at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut. He is best known for his pioneering work in ecological psychology and in applying dynamic systems approach for the study of motor behavior. He is the founder of the Center for the Ecological Study of Perception and Action. His research spans a number of areas including: dynamic touch and haptics, interlimb coordination, visual perception and optic flow, postural stability, visual word recognition and speech perception. Along with William Mace and Robert Shaw , he has been one of the leading explicators of the ecological psychology of J. J. Gibson. His pioneering work with J. A. Scott Kelso and Peter N. Kugler introduced the physical language of complex systems to the understanding of perception and action. He also helped to introduce the ideas of Russian motor control theorist, Nikolai Bernstein , and his colleagues to a larger audience. Working with Georgije Lukatela and other colleagues at Haskins Laboratories, he has exploited the dual nature of the Serbo-Croatian orthography to help understand word recognition.
Turvey is also the winner of the IgNobel Prize in Physics along with
Prof. Ramesh Balasubramaniam of Cognitive & Information Sciences at the University of California, Merced , for exploring and explaining the dynamics of hula-hooping.

Representative publications