This work was begun as an investigation into the characteristics of passive movement sense at the metatarso-phalangeal joint. Since the original work of Goldscheider (1889), other investigators (Winter, 1912; Laidlaw & Hamilton, 1937 a, b;Cleghorn & Darcus, 1952) have investigated joint sensation in normal subjects by measuring the response to a continuous movement. Their work established the existence of threshold speeds of movement, varyingwith different joints in different subjects, below which sensation of movement in a relaxed limb was either absent, or present irregularly and inconstantly.In the present investigation speeds were used considerably above the threshold values, but not so fast as to introduce complications resulting from variations in reaction times. The toe was displaced at a uniform angular rate and the subject responded as soon as the sensation of displacement was appreciated. The results were expressed in degrees of joint rotation, hereafter called the reaction angle. The experiment was carried out on eighty-four volunteer subjects, all medical students, in an endeavour to establish a normal range for sensation of passive movement.An initial investigation was carried out to test whether the reaction angles did in fact represent a true sensation and were not distributed at random. An analysis of variance carried out on the data left no doubt that the reaction angles represented a real measurement; some variability was shown within the scores for each foot of each subject and between the averages of the two feet of the same subject, but far greater variability was present between average scores for different individuals. Further, this initial investigation revealed no significant differences between reaction angles for the same subject at the three different speeds used (0.2, 1 and 2°/sec), although, at the slowest speed, judgement of the moment at which unequivocal sensation of movement

There is no such thing as a disembodied mind. We posit that cognitive development can only occur through interaction with the physical world. To this end, we are developing a robotic platform for the purpose of studying cognition. We suggest that the central component of cognition is a memory which is primarily associative, one where learning occurs as the correlation of events from diverse inputs. We also believe that human-like cognition requires a well-integrated sensorymotor system, to provide these diverse inputs. As implemented in our robot, this system includes binaural hearing, stereo vision, tactile sense, and basic proprioceptive control. On top of these abilities, we are implementing and studying various models of processing, learning and decision making. Our goal is to produce a robot that will learn to carry out simple tasks in response to natural language requests. The robot's understanding of language will be learned concurrently with its other cognitive abilities. We have already developed a robust system and conducted a number of experiments on the way to this goal, some details of which appear in this paper. This is a progress report of what we believe will be a long term project with significant implications.