Authors: Laure Fernandez Reinoud J Bootsma
Publish Date: 2004/07/14
Volume: 159, Issue: 4, Pages: 458-466
Abstract
Nine participants performed a reciprocal precision aiming task under different experimental conditions Due to the anisotropy of the work space varying the direction of motion from 0° to 315° in steps of 45° allowed exploration of the effects of biomechanical constraints that were found to affect the duration of movement but not the shape of the kinematic pattern Varying the size of the targets to be attained W 25 125 and 0625 cm for a constant intertarget distance of 10 cm and the nature linear or nonlinear of the mapping between effector space motion of a handheld stylus on a graphics tablet and task space motion of a pointer between targets on a computer screen also led to changes in movement duration However the latter type of constraint gave rise to systematic changes in the pattern of movement with progressively more difficult tasks being characterized by progressively less harmonic motion patterns We conclude that in contrast to biomechanical constraints at the level of the effector informational constraints at the level of the task affect the processes underlying movement organization For the range of values studied the effects of these two types of constraint can be considered to be independent
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