A traditional continuous Fitts' task may be described as a one-dimensi
onal oscillation between two targets. The combination of two such osci
llations along intersecting axes gives rise to a two-dimensional aimin
g task, allowing the study of the speed-accuracy trade-off in two-dime
nsional task space. In two experiments subjects were asked to draw as
many ellipses as possible while passing through four targets, arranged
around the extreme points of the two major axes of a model ellipse. I
n the first experiment, task difficulty was manipulated simultaneously
along the two axes of the ellipse. Regardless of ellipse eccentricity
and orientation, movement time (MT) was found to depend linearly on F
itts' index of difficulty (ID), which combines between-target distance
and target width. In the second experiment, ID was manipulated indepe
ndently for the short and the long axes of the ellipse. There was a st
rong linear relation between MT and ID averaged over the two axes, wit
h the two independent measures of task difficulty exerting interactive
effects on MT: the higher the ID on one axis, the smaller the effect
of the ID on the other. The present results demonstrate that Fitts' la
w, only examinated so far in one-dimensional aiming tasks, generalises
to two-dimensional task space.