Cognitive constraint on the 'automatic pilot' for the hand: movement intention influences the hand's susceptibility to involuntary online corrections.
Research suggests that the reaching hand automatically deviates toward a target that changes location (jumps) during the reach. In the current study, we investigated whether movement intention can influence the target jump's impact on the hand. We compared the degree of trajectory deviation to a jumped target under three instruction conditions: (1) GO, in which participants were told to go to the target if it jumped, (2) STOP, in which participants were told to immediately stop their movement if the target jumped, and (3) IGNORE, in which participants were told to ignore the target if it jumped and to continue to its initial location. We observed a reduced response to the jump in the IGNORE condition relative to the other conditions, suggesting that the response to the jump is contingent on the jump being a task-relevant event.
Cameron
Brendan D
BD
School of Human Kinetics, University of British Columbia, 6081 University Blvd., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 1Z1.
Cressman
Erin K
EK
Franks
Ian M
IM
Chua
Romeo
R
D000293:Adolescent; D001288:Attention; D001364:Awareness; D003071:Cognition; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D033182:Intention; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception; D009949:Orientation; D011434:Proprioception; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D055815:Young Adult