About

Joseph McIntyre is a lecturer on education at Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), where he teaches statistics and questionnaire design. His research interests include applying methods from statistics to address questions in education, with a particular focus on measuring student experiences and exploring issues related to gender and education. McIntyre holds an Ed.D. from Harvard University, earned in 2017, and a B.A. in mathematics from Dartmouth College. He also has an Ed.M. in human development and psychology from HGSE and has previous experience as a high school math instructor. His work emphasizes understanding social disconnection and developing educational strategies to address inequality and diversity in educational settings.

Research topics

• Computer science
• Psychology
• Artificial intelligence
• Computer vision
• Communication

Selected publications

• Effect of Risks, Consequences, and Gravitational Priors on Sensorimotor Coordination: Insights from Weightlessness

  Journal of Neuroscience · 2026-04-20

  articleOpen access

  When manipulating objects, our brain continuously adjusts grip force (GF) to the variations in load force (LF) generated by our own movements. GF-LF coordination provides a window into the predictive capabilities of the brain. To better understand how gravity influences these predictions, we analyzed grip dynamics and movement kinematics in astronauts (two females, nine males) manipulating objects on the ground (in 1G) and during spaceflight in a stable weightless environment (in 0G). We found that the imprint of gravity remains visible in the way we manipulate objects even after months of living in weightlessness. Empirical evidence showed that humans overcompensate for the absence of weight when manipulating objects in 0G, suggesting an anti-Bayesian anticipation of object buoyancy or negative weight. Shortly after returning to Earth, progressive kinematic adjustments were observed during the first movements with the object, as well as signs of incorrect LF predictions. The gradual and incomplete adjustments when passing from one gravitational context to the other underlines the predictive nature of the neural processes underlying these behaviors. In addition, a detailed examination of GF in weightlessness revealed a heretofore unrecognized link between the parameters of the GF/LF coupling, best described by a quadratic dependence of GF on both LF and the kinetic energy of the object. We conclude that not only is the risk of slip a determining factor in the control strategy, the impact of potential accidental slips is important as well.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Author response for "Learning English in China: The Earlier, the Better?"

  2025-03-21

  peer-review
  PublisherDOI

• Learning English in China: The Earlier, the Better?

  International Journal of Applied Linguistics · 2025-06-22

  article

  ABSTRACT This study examined the relationship of university students’ English proficiency to the age at which they started learning English in mainland China. With the data collected from 4530 students in 50 universities in 24 different provinces or municipalities, we employed a multiple regression model to investigate (a) whether the tested English score in the national entrance exam was predicted by the age at which the students started learning English and (b) whether the start age of English learning influences the association between time invested and learning outcome. Our results found that students who began learning English in third grade predicted significantly lower scores than those who started in kindergarten. However, no such significance of “advantage” was observed in earlier starts from kindergarten over Grade 1. Although the main effect of total learning duration was not significant, its interaction effect suggests that students who start learning later benefit more from longer durations of English input and tend to catch up quickly and show faster growth. These findings conflict with the ‘the earlier, the better’ assumption in language learning and further raise the question to what degree foreign language education should prioritize starting early versus focusing on quality and positive affect.

  PublisherDOI

• Educational Attainment, Diversity, and Trust Dynamics in Nigeria

  Proceedings. · 2025-06-10

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Trust is a fundamental pillar of societal cohesion, facilitating collaboration and progress.However, trust dynamics in diverse societies remain underexplored, particularly in non-Western contexts.Using the Afrobarometer 2022 dataset, this study investigates how education influences social and institutional (government) trust in Nigeria, one of the world's most structurally pluralistic nations.Findings reveal that education was initially negatively associated with trust, but its effect diminished when religion and ethnicity were accounted for in a stepwise multiple regression analysis.Lower-educated groups, such as Hausa, Muslims, and non-English speakers, reported higher trust on average, while their higher-educated counterparts exhibited lower trust, reflecting an intricate balancing act that neutralized education's net effect.Drawing on theories of structural pluralism, social capital, and human capital, this study highlights the importance of inclusive education policies to bridge divides and build trust in pluralistic societies like Nigeria.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Dynamic Movement Primitives in Constrained Environments: Teaching Control Policies Through Repeated Demonstrations

  IEEE Access · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Enabling robots to learn from few demonstrations is a crucial step toward task automation. This paper addresses a key challenge in robotic learning from demonstration: developing adaptable, constraint-aware systems that learn from a limited number of demonstrations, infer task-specific geometrical constraints autonomously, and ensure trajectory adherence to these constraints while remaining accessible to non-expert users. The proposed methodology integrates automatic task-constraint extraction from teleoperated demonstrations with a novel sigmoidal coupling term (SIG-CDMP) to enforce spatial constraints within Dynamic Movement Primitives (DMPs). By analyzing variability in demonstrations, the framework defines a tolerance zone for robot motion and ensures that generated trajectories remain within these bounds, even when adapting to new initial or goal positions. The efficacy of this approach is validated in two real-world industrial applications—sterility testing in pharmaceutical industry and cable wiring in electric vehicle batteries—demonstrating negligible increases in computational cost and smooth, constraint-compliant trajectories. By integrating task-constraint extraction and enforcement, this approach advances the development of constraint-aware robotic systems that learn from repeated demonstrations to teach control policies respecting inferred geometrical constraints, paving the way for safe and reliable task automation in complex environments.

  PublisherDOI

• Author response for "Learning English in China: The Earlier, the Better?"

  2025-04-24

  peer-review
  PublisherDOI

• A Singular Theory of Sensorimotor Coordination: On Targeted Motions in Space

  Journal of Neuroscience · 2025-01-17 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Gravity has long been purported to serve a unique role in sensorimotor coordination, but the specific mechanisms underlying gravity-based visuomotor realignment remain elusive. In this study, astronauts (nine males, two females) performed targeted hand movements with eyes open or closed, both on the ground and in weightlessness. Measurements revealed systematic drift in hand-path orientation seen only when eyes were closed and only in very specific conditions with respect to gravity. In weightlessness, drift in path orientation was observed in two postures (seated, supine) for two different movement axes (longitudinal, sagittal); on Earth, such drift was only observed during longitudinal (horizontal) movements performed in the supine posture. In addition to providing clear evidence that gravitational cues play a fundamental role in sensorimotor coordination, these unique observations lead us to propose an "inverted pendulum" hypothesis to explain the saliency of the gravity vector for eye-hand coordination-and why eye-hand coordination is altered during body tilt or in weightlessness.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Understanding adolescent mental health symptom progression in school-based settings: The Substance Use and Risk Factors (SURF) longitudinal survey.

  School Psychology · 2025-02-10 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  = 14.3 years). Linking using minimally invasive questions such as the ones presented here may reduce risk, increase privacy, and offer a low-burden opportunity to link observations across time. This work aims to characterize longitudinal trajectories of mental health including substance use in large, community-based samples, as well as the individual-, school-, and community-level risk and protective factors that may modulate the expression of mental health symptoms over time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• A Bi-Directional Deep Learning Interface for Gaze-Controlled Wheelchair Navigation: Overcoming the Midas Touch Problem

  2025-10-08

  article

  We present a gaze-based augmented reality control interface for electric wheelchairs, addressing the challenges faced by individuals with mobility impairments. The development transitions through three stages: model training with offline evaluation, Virtual Reality (VR) simulations, and physical deployment. First, we trained deep learning models, comparing Transformers and LSTMs, to predict locomotion intentions based on gaze data. While gaze predicts steering intentions well, it sometimes diverges from locomotion goals. To tackle this, we classify gaze movements as either indicative of locomotor intention or not. This novel approach addresses the Midas Touch Problem of gaze. Datasets were collected in controlled VR environments featuring different tasks. We find that data sets with tasks that encouraged diverse navigation and gaze behaviors enable strong generalization. The online VR simulation evaluation phase enabled safe and immersive testing, allowing the assessment of system performance and the integration of feedback for user guidance. Our approach provided smoother navigation control compared to traditional “Where-You-Look-Is-Where-You-Go” methods. Feedback improved user ratings of the system. In the final stage, the system was deployed on a physical wheelchair equipped with an augmented reality (AR) device to provide feedback about the predictions to the user, allowing real-world evaluation. Despite differences in user behavior between VR and physical environments, the system successfully translated gaze inputs into precise and safe navigation commands. Users were able to steer the wheelchair solely using their eyes while simultaneously being able to look at destinations at the side of the path.

  PublisherDOI

• Upright Posture: A Singular Condition Stabilizing Sensorimotor Coordination

  eNeuro · 2025-07-01

  articleOpen access

  It has long been hypothesized that the nervous system uses the direction of gravity to align the various sensory systems when interacting with the external world. In line with this hypothesis, systematic drift in hand-path orientation was recently observed during targeted arm motions performed with eyes closed in weightlessness or, on Earth, for longitudinal movements in a supine posture. No such drift was observed in upright posture on Earth. But the precise conditions under which participants exhibit such drift, and the factors that influence the magnitude of the drift, are not yet known. The objective of our study was to investigate if the upright posture, by virtue of being at a biomechanical singularity induced by the force of gravity, represents a unique condition in which drift in hand-path orientation is prevented. Human participants (male and female) performed sequences of repeated point-to-point arm movements between two visual targets aligned with the longitudinal body axis, first with eyes open, then with eyes closed. Participants performed these movements in various body orientations: seated upright, and tilted backward at 45, 90, and 135°. We observed drift in hand-path orientation in the eyes-closed condition when the body was tilted, but not when it was upright. The directions and rates of drift were indistinguishable between the three tilted orientations tested (45, 90, and 135°). These findings support the hypothesis that the upright posture is a unique configuration that facilitates sensorimotor transformations and prevents drift in path orientation when the eyes are closed.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Alain Berthoz

  86 shared

• Michele Tagliabue

  Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

  73 shared

• М. И. Липшиц

  Institute for Information Transmission Problems

  62 shared

• Guy Chéron

  Université Libre de Bruxelles

  60 shared

• Ana Bengoetxea

  Université Libre de Bruxelles

  54 shared

• Bernard Dan

  51 shared

• C. De Saedeleer

  University of Mons

  49 shared

• Ana Maria Cebolla

  Université Libre de Bruxelles

  47 shared

Labs

• Harvard Graduate School of EducationPI

Education

• Ph.D. Neuroscience, Brain and Cognitive Science

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  1990

• B.S., Biology

  California Institute of Technology

  1983

• B.S., Engineering

  California Institute of Technology

  1982

Awards & honors

• 2019 Morningstar Award