REACHING MOVEMENTS - PROGRAMMING TIME-COURSE IS INDEPENDENT OF CHOICENUMBER

THE present study was undertaken to assess the effect of varying the n umber of choices on the time needed by human subjects to program the c orrect direction of reaching arm movements. Subjects were required to reach for visual targets presented in two, four or eight different dir ections. In none of these subjects was the time needed to program resp onse direction correctly prolonged by increasing the number of choices . In the present experimental situation, the time course of the proces s by which information derived from a visual target is used to accurat ely set the direction of reaching arm movements is uninfluenced by the number of possible targets.