Abstract
Successful obstacle avoidance requires a close coordination of the visual and the motor systems. Visual information is essential for adjusting movements in order to avoid unwanted collisions. Yet, established obstacle avoidance paradigms have typically either focused on gaze strategies or on motor adjustments. Here we were interested in whether humans show similar visuomotor sensitivity to obstacles when gaze and motor behaviour are measured across different obstacle avoidance tasks. To this end, we measured participants’ hand movement paths when grasping targets in the presence of obstacles as well as their gaze behaviour when walking through a cluttered hallway. We found that participants who showed more pronounced motor adjustments during grasping also spent more time looking at obstacles during locomotion. Furthermore, movement durations correlated positively in both tasks. Results suggest considerable intra-individual consistency in the strength of the avoidance response across different visuomotor measures potentially indicating an individual’s tendency to perform safe actions.
Highlights
Humans show a remarkable ability to avoid collision with obstacles when moving through a complex environment
As successful obstacle avoidance crucially depends on vision to accurately plan and control limb movements, it comes as no surprise that it is frequently used as an experimental paradigm to understand visuomotor integration
This study aimed to explore whether variations in visuomotor behaviour in response to obstacles during locomotion and grasping tasks are associated on an intra-individual basis
Summary
Humans show a remarkable ability to avoid collision with obstacles when moving through a complex environment. If obstacles are present, participants slow down their actions and select movement paths that are safe and efficient This is usually achieved by increasing the distance between the moving limb and the obstacles while keeping deviations away from the optimal path to a minimum (Chapman & Goodale, 2008; Patla, Tomescu, Greig, & Novak, 2007; Rosenbaum et al, 1999; Ross, Schenk, & Hesse, 2014). The lack of direct obstacle fixations in hand movement tasks possibly relates to the fact that obstacles are usually quite large and are placed in close vicinity to the target in order to maximise their effects on movement execution They can be spotted in near periphery without shifting gaze
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