Kinesiological motion expert system.

Kinesiology builds on anatomical information by establishing which muscles contribute to human motion and to what extent. This 'body as machine' approach seeks to identify particular muscles as contractile 'engines'. The learning of muscular contributions to human motions based on long tables of origins, insertions, innervations, and actions is tedious and often incomplete based on author judgments of which muscles and motions to include. The kinesiological motion expert system (KMES) was developed so that students could easily select joints, actions, and tension types and receive computerized output listing the muscles that could contribute to the motion requested. In addition, a student can select a particular muscle and tension type and the program will return all of the motions that the selected muscle might contribute. The KMES was written in PDC Prolog and has a knowledge base of 1583 movements. Implementation of the KMES in kinesiology classes resulted in an increase in average student final scores of approximately 15% (F(3,190) = 12.11, P < 0.0001).