Location but not amount of stimulus occlusion influences the stability of visuomotor coordination

Abstract

The current study examined whether the amount and location of available movement information influenced the stability of visuomotor coordination. Participants coordinated a handheld pendulum with an oscillating visual stimulus in an inphase and antiphase manner. The effects of occluding different amounts of phase at different phase locations were examined. Occluding the 0°/180° phase locations (end-points) significantly increased the variability of the visuomotor coordination. The amount of occlusion had little or no affect on the stability of the coordination. We concluded that the end-points of a visual rhythm are privileged and provide access to movement information that ensures stable coordination. The results are discussed with respect to the proposal of Bingham (Ecol Psychol 16:45–43, 2004) and Wilson et al. (Exp Brain Res 165:351–361, 2005) that the relevant information for rhythmic visual coordination is relative direction information.