Abstract
There is preliminary evidence that there are several types of submovements in movement aiming that reflect different processes of control and can result from particular task constraints. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of movement space and time task criteria on the prevalence of different submovement control characteristics in discrete aiming. Twelve participants completed 3 distance x 5 time conditions each with 100 trials in a target-aiming movement task. The kinematic structure of the trajectory determined the prevalence of 5 submovement types (none; pre-peak, post-peak movement velocity; undershoot, overshoot). The findings showed that the overall number of submovements increased in the slower space-time conditions and was predominantly characterized by post-peak trajectory submovements rather than discrete overshoot submovements. Overshoot submovements were more frequent in the high average movement velocity and short time duration conditions. We concluded that there are qualitatively different distributional patterns of submovement types in discrete aiming tasks that are organized by the quantitative scaling of the average movement velocity arising from multiple control processes to meet the specific space-time task constraints.
Highlights
There are many manual tasks where a high degree of accuracy and efficiency of control is needed in aiming a movement at a target
His landmark investigation distinguished the role of a current control phase based on the change in the kinematic trajectory of movement and showed that it was a significant factor that related to movement accuracy
The distribution of the number of submovements shifted from positive skewness at fast, fast-mid and middle conditions to negative skewness at mid-accurate and accurate conditions
Summary
There are many manual tasks where a high degree of accuracy and efficiency of control is needed in aiming a movement at a target. Completing movement-aiming tasks more quickly than usual typically results in an increase in spatial error. This is the classic phenomenon of the trade-off between movement speed and accuracy that is a fundamental and long-standing problem in the field of motor control [1,2,3,4]. Woodworth [4] proposed that discrete aiming movements consisted of two successive phases that he called initial adjustment and current control, respectively His landmark investigation distinguished the role of a current control phase based on the change in the kinematic trajectory of movement and showed that it was a significant factor that related to movement accuracy
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