title: Moving farther but faster: an exception to Fitts's law.
abstract: Fitts's law holds that movement time (MT) increases with longer distances. Here we report a violation of this law: When the target appears in a structured, linear display with placeholders indicating the possible target locations, MT to the most distant target is not longer than MT to the second most distant target, but rather tends to be shorter. Furthermore, the presence of placeholders attenuates the range effect that occurs in the absence of placeholders. These findings suggest that Fitts's law may be limited to egocentric visuomotor action, and that the visual control of hand movements may use allocentric, in addition to egocentric, spatial information.
authors.affiliation: Department of Movement Sciences, University of Maastricht, Maastricht, The Netherlands. jos.adam@bw.unimaas.nl
authors.forename: Jos J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Adam
authors.forename: Robin
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mol
authors.forename: Jay
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Pratt
authors.forename: Martin H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Fischer
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009068:Movement; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D013028:Space Perception; D013997:Time Factors; D014796:Visual Perception