Intermittent Vision and Goal-Directed Movement: A Review

Abstract

It is well known that vision makes an important contribution to the control of goal-directed movements. However, task performance can be maintained when vision is interrupted, such as when a goalkeeper faces a free kick in soccer and the ball moves behind teammates and opposing players. To maintain behavior, it is necessary to process the visual information available from intermittent samples. In this review, we consider the performance and learning effects of intermittent vision in tasks such as aiming, reaching and grasping, goal-directed locomotion and ball-catching. We review research that finds both interocular and intraocular integration contribute to continuous upper limb control with intermittent visual pickup/sampling. Recent work using intermittent visual presentation (i.e., stroboscopic vision) to facilitate learning of general and task-specific visual-motor skills indicates that training/learning protocols that challenge, but don’t alter, the visual-motor processing associated with a specific visual-motor task can be effective. In this theoretical context, we discuss methodological and design factors that could impact the effectiveness of future training studies.

Keywords:

• word
• intermittent vision
• upper limb control
• stroboscopic vision

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Human participants are able to track moving objects with some degree of smooth eye movements even with intermittent no vision intervals as long as 960 ms (Barnes & Asselman, 1992).

2 The absence of a difference could be due to a ceiling effect given that in both situations participants were catching almost 100% of the ball. Thus, it seems that either the ball catching task was easier or the catchers were more skilled than Olivier et al. (1998).

3 We find it curious that Smith and Mitroff (2012) chose to examine anticipation timing with the Bassin Timer, which like the goggles is an intermittent device (i.e., depending on runway speed there are longer or shorter between-LED intervals).

4 Although not empirically verified with these eyewear, reduced light transmission (i.e., low level light) impacts upon basic function such as visual acuity (Von Noorden & Burian, 1959), contrast sensitivity (Owsley et al., 1983), motion perception (Grossman & Blake, 1999), and ocular accommodation (Johnson, 1976).

Additional information

Funding

The empirical work conducted in the first author’s lab was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (RGPGP386762-10). The empirical work conducted in the second author’s lab was in part supported by a research and development project funded by Nike, Inc.