Processing visual feedback information for movement control

Abstract

The time needed to process visual feedback information for the control of aimed movements was investigated. Experiment 1 demonstrated that withdrawing visual feedback information from the initial portions of aiming responses had little effect on movement outcome. This finding suggested that visual processing times may be faster than previous estimates. The vision manipulation paradigm employed in Experiment 1 was combined with high-speed cinematography. Examination of movement patterns indicated that the average time between the presentation of visual error information and the initiation of a movement correction was 135 msec. The findings from these two experiments support the contention that the time needed to process visual error information and to use this information for movement control is shorter than previous estimates of 190 to 300 msec.