On Friday, 11.06.21 Mengkai Luan successfully defended his dissertation - congratulations! Professor Joachim Hermsdörfer, as chairman of the examination board, as well as the first examiner were on site for examination, while the second examiner, Prof. Rouwen Canal Bruland from the Friedrich Schiller University Jena was able to examine digitally - and later convey his congratulations.
Mengkai Luan had been a doctoral student at the Chair of Sport Psychology since fall 2017, initially supervised by Jürgen Beckmann, later by Felix Ehrlenspiel. His PhD was funded by the China Scholarship Council (CSC). Building on his M.Sc. in Neuroscience from Beijing Normal University, his doctoral research investigated conditions for movement learning using a finger sequence paradigm. Two of his three publications included in the dissertation titled "The Effects of Attentional Directions and Multisensory Action Effects on Motor Skill Performance." In another study published in Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, and thus a Q1 journal, he examined how multimodal but redundant action effects affect learning. All studies show that attentional distractions have different effects not only in the course of learning, but also already within action preparation.
Luan, M., Mirifar, A., Beckmann, J., & Ehrlenspiel, F. (2020). The Varying Effects of Dual Tasks on the Performance of Motor Skills across Practice. Journal of Motor Behavior. doi:10.1080/00222895.2020.1828797
Luan, M., Maurer, H., Mirifar, A., Beckmann, J., & Ehrlenspiel, F. (2020). Multisensory action effects facilitate the performance of motor sequences. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics. doi: 10.3758/s13414-020-02179-9
Luan, M., & Mirifar, A. (2021). The Effect of Attentional Direction on Sub-Stages of Preparing for Motor Skill Execution Across Practice. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 128(3), 1292-1309. doi: 10.1177/00315125211009026