Human Action Control ― From Intentions to Movements

Dr. Dieter Nattkemper studied psychology at the University of Munster. His professional career started at the University of Osnabruck where he was engaged in investigating mechanisms of eye movement control in reading. In the 1980s he worked (with W. Prinz) at the University of Bielefeld on issues related to understanding how internal, cognitive models of the environment contribute to controlling human behaviour and how these supposed internal models are generated, consolidated, and modified in response to changes in our external world. He achieved his Ph.D. at the University of Bielefeld with studies elucidating the role of eye movements in tasks that require processes of continuous selection (continuous visual search). Thereafter, he joined the research group ‘Cognition and Action’ of the Max-Planck-Institute for Psychological Research (headed by W. Prinz) where his research focused on questions relating to the mechanisms governing performance in serial reaction tasks. At the end of the past century he moved to Humboldt University Berlin where he studied (with M. Ziessler and P. Frensch) the mechanisms underlying human action planning. Dr. Nattkemper has co-authored several articles in international journals, chapters in readers and psychological textbooks, a German textbook on human action planning and control (with B. Hommel), and co-edited a special issue on human action control. Due to steadily increasing problems caused by multiple sclerosis he finished his professional career as an experimental psychologist and retired at the end of 2013.