Wac. Spijkers et P. Lochner, PARTIAL VISUAL FEEDBACK AND SPATIAL END-POINT ACCURACY OF DISCRETE AIMING MOVEMENTS, Journal of motor behavior, 26(3), 1994, pp. 283-295
Five experiments are reported in which the effect of partial visual fe
edback on the accuracy of discrete target aiming was investigated. Vis
ual feedback was manipulated through a spectacle-mounted liquid-crysta
l tachistoscope. The length of the visual feedback interval was varied
as a percentage of the instructed movement time. In Experiment 1, the
length of the vision interval was manipulated symmetrically at the be
ginning- and end-phase of the movement, whereas in the remaining exper
iments, the vision time was varied with respect to the end-phase only.
The variations at the end were examined for different distances (Expe
riment 2), different movement speeds at the same distance (Experiment
3), and in small interstep intervals (Experiment 4). A vision time of
more than 150 ms at the end-phase of the movement enhanced aiming perf
ormance in all experiments. Longer vision times monotonously improved
aiming accuracy; the fifth experiment showed that a vision time of abo
ut 275 ms was sufficient for near-perfect aiming. Furthermore, the sig
nificance of vision during the first phase of a movement was demonstra
ted again. The results of the five experiments pointed to shorter visu
omotor processing times. To explain the beneficial effects of short vi
sion times for aiming accuracy, we propose a model of visuomotor proce
ssing that is based on the stochastic optimized submovement model of M
eyer, Abrams, Komblum, Wright, and Smith (1988).