Target velocity effects on manual interception kinematics

Participants generated manual interception movements toward a target cursor that moved across a computer screen. The target reached its peak velocity either during the first third, at the midpoint, or during the last third of the movement. In Experiment 1 the view of the target was available for eit her the first 316, 633, 950, or 1267 ms, after which it disappeared. Result s showed that for all viewing conditions, the timing of the interception ve locity was related to the temporal properties of the target's trajectory. I n Experiment 2, when the portion of the target trajectory that was viewed w as reversed (such that participants did not see the first 316, 633, 950, or 1267 ms of the trajectory, but instead saw only the later portions of the trajectory), there was no clear relationship between the target trajectory and the timing of the aiming trajectory. These results suggest that partici pants use visual information early in the target's trajectory to form a rep resentation of the target motion that is used to facilitate manual intercep tion. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.