Abstract
We determined whether uncertainty about the location of one’s hand in virtual environments limits the efficacy of online control processes. In the Non-aligned and Aligned conditions, the participant’s hand was represented by a cursor on a vertical or horizontal display, respectively. In the Natural condition, participants saw their hand. During an acquisition phase, visual feedback was either permitted or not during movement execution. To test the hypothesis (Norris et al. 2001) that reliance on visual feedback increases as the task becomes less natural (Natural < Aligned < Non-aligned), following acquisition, participants performed a transfer phase without visual feedback. During acquisition in both visual feedback conditions, movement endpoint variability increased as the task became less natural. This suggests that the orientation of the display and the representation of one’s hand by a cursor introduced uncertainty about its location, which limits the efficacy of online control processes. In contradiction with the hypothesis of Norris et al. (2001), withdrawing visual feedback in transfer had a larger deleterious effect on movement accuracy as the task became less natural. This suggests that the CNS increases the weight attributed to the input that can be processed without first having to be transformed.
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Notes
In transfer, within-participant variability at key kinematic markers showed no difference between Feedback conditions. As in acquisition, variability increased up to peak deceleration, although more importantly for the Non-aligned condition than for the other two conditions. There was a significant decrease in variability between peak deceleration and movement endpoint. This decrease was significantly larger in the Natural than in the Aligned condition and in the Aligned than in the Non-Aligned condition.
This position might appear difficult to reconcile with recent observations reported by van Beers et al. (1999), who asked participants to match the position of their right index finger with their left index finger. In one condition, the participants could see their entire right arm, whereas in a second condition, they could only see the tip of their right index finger. The results did not reveal any significant difference in position matching variability between the two conditions, which contradicts our hypothesis. However, in that study, the position of the right index finger was also “known” through proprioceptive information transiting via the corpus callosum. Therefore, when there is no direct interhemispheric transfer of information concerning the position of one’s finger, it remains possible that seeing one’s entire arm rather than only one’s finger tip prior to movement initiation increases the reliability of the initial stylus position.
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Acknowledgment
This work was supported by a Discovery grant (L. P.) provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
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Veilleux, LN., Proteau, L. Suboptimal online control of aiming movements in virtual contexts. Exp Brain Res 208, 345–358 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-010-2487-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-010-2487-9