Interaction of Perception and Action in Discrete and Continuous Rapid Aiming Tasks

ABSTRACT

Previously, we have shown that discrete and continuous rapid aiming tasks are governed by distinct visuomotor control mechanisms by assessing the combined visual illusion effects on the perceived and effective index of difficulty (ID). All participants were perceptually biased by the combined visual illusion before they performed the rapid aiming tasks. In the current study, the authors manipulated the order of performing perceptual and motor tasks to examine whether perceptual or motor experience with the illusory visual target would influence the subsequent perceived and effective ID in discrete and continuous tapping tasks. The results supported our hypothesis showing that perceptual experience with the illusory visual target in the discrete condition reduced the effective ID in the subsequent discrete tapping task, and motor experience with the illusory visual target in the continuous condition reduced the illusion effects on the perceived ID in the subsequent perceptual judgment task. The study demonstrates the coinfluence of perception and action, and suggests that perception and action influence one another with different magnitude depending on the spatial frame of reference used to perform the perceptuomotor task.

Keywords:

• index of difficulty
• perception and action
• perceptual-motor experience
• rapid aiming movement

FUNDING

This study was supported by a student research grant awarded to the first author by the College of Health Science at University of Wyoming.

Notes

1. The effect of visual condition was evaluated separately for P_W and P_A as previously by performing the 2-way mixed design ANOVA on the difference scores (judged magnitude – actual magnitude), and the results showed that participants overestimated the target diameter and underestimated the target amplitude more in the illusory easy condition than in the other two conditions with no difference detected between the latter two. This was seen for participants who performed the discrete judgment task in both perceptual-motor and motor-perceptual order. However, for participants who performed the continuous judgment task, it was only seen in the perceptual-motor order, and both overestimation of the target diameter and underestimation of target amplitude appeared to reduce in the motor-perceptual order.

2. The unidirectional effect of the combined visual illusion was related to the configuration of surrounding features in the illusory images, which was more successful in the illusory easy condition than in the illusory hard condition. (for detailed discussion, see Alphonsa el al., 2016; Knol et al., 2015).