Abstract
In 1967, Eric began his academic journey as an undergraduate student in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Waterloo. His undergraduate mentor was Ian Williams, and together they published Eric’s BSc thesis work in the Journal of Motor Behavior. Eric pursued his Master’s at UBC where he worked with Bob Schutz and Ron Marteniuk. With Bob, Eric published his classic measurement paper “Absolute error: A devil in disguise”, and with Ron, and others, a number of important papers on motor short-term memory -- a hot topic in the 1970’s. Eric developed his interest in neuropsychology when he returned to Waterloo for his PhD and clinical training in Psychology. Here, he worked with people like Ernie MacKinnon and Phil Bryden. As an assistant professor in Kinesiology at Waterloo, Eric expanded his research repertoire beyond traditional motor control/learning work to include the study of apraxia and neuropsychological issues related to cerebral organization, handedness and lateral performance differences in limb control. Throughout his career Eric’s basic and clinical work were complementary. They were driven by the premise that we can learn about typical movement by studying its breakdown. Conversely, movement disorders are best examined in the context of basic models of information and neural processing. His approach is evident in his work on apraxia, stroke, Down syndrome and Parkinson’s disease. I will discuss his early studies on manual asymmetries aa well as the influence of his apraxia model on our work with Down syndrome.
