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The Effect of Gaze Position on Reaching Movements in an Obstacle Avoidance Task

Numerous studies have addressed the issue of where people look when they perform hand movements. Yet, very little is known about how visuomotor performance is affected by fixation location. Previous studies investigating the accuracy of actions performed in visual periphery have revealed inconsisten...

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Autores principales: Ross, Alasdair Iain, Schenk, Thomas, Hesse, Constanze
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4670101/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26636966
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0144193
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author Ross, Alasdair Iain
Schenk, Thomas
Hesse, Constanze
author_facet Ross, Alasdair Iain
Schenk, Thomas
Hesse, Constanze
author_sort Ross, Alasdair Iain
collection PubMed
description Numerous studies have addressed the issue of where people look when they perform hand movements. Yet, very little is known about how visuomotor performance is affected by fixation location. Previous studies investigating the accuracy of actions performed in visual periphery have revealed inconsistent results. While movements performed under full visual-feedback (closed-loop) seem to remain surprisingly accurate, open-loop as well as memory-guided movements usually show a distinct bias (i.e. overestimation of target eccentricity) when executed in periphery. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether gaze position affects movements that are performed under full-vision but cannot be corrected based on a direct comparison between the hand and target position. To do so, we employed a classical visuomotor reaching task in which participants were required to move their hand through a gap between two obstacles into a target area. Participants performed the task in four gaze conditions: free-viewing (no restrictions on gaze), central fixation, or fixation on one of the two obstacles. Our findings show that obstacle avoidance behaviour is moderated by fixation position. Specifically, participants tended to select movement paths that veered away from the obstacle fixated indicating that perceptual errors persist in closed-loop vision conditions if they cannot be corrected effectively based on visual feedback. Moreover, measuring the eye-movement in a free-viewing task (Experiment 2), we confirmed that naturally participants’ prefer to move their eyes and hand to the same spatial location.
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spelling pubmed-46701012015-12-10 The Effect of Gaze Position on Reaching Movements in an Obstacle Avoidance Task Ross, Alasdair Iain Schenk, Thomas Hesse, Constanze PLoS One Research Article Numerous studies have addressed the issue of where people look when they perform hand movements. Yet, very little is known about how visuomotor performance is affected by fixation location. Previous studies investigating the accuracy of actions performed in visual periphery have revealed inconsistent results. While movements performed under full visual-feedback (closed-loop) seem to remain surprisingly accurate, open-loop as well as memory-guided movements usually show a distinct bias (i.e. overestimation of target eccentricity) when executed in periphery. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether gaze position affects movements that are performed under full-vision but cannot be corrected based on a direct comparison between the hand and target position. To do so, we employed a classical visuomotor reaching task in which participants were required to move their hand through a gap between two obstacles into a target area. Participants performed the task in four gaze conditions: free-viewing (no restrictions on gaze), central fixation, or fixation on one of the two obstacles. Our findings show that obstacle avoidance behaviour is moderated by fixation position. Specifically, participants tended to select movement paths that veered away from the obstacle fixated indicating that perceptual errors persist in closed-loop vision conditions if they cannot be corrected effectively based on visual feedback. Moreover, measuring the eye-movement in a free-viewing task (Experiment 2), we confirmed that naturally participants’ prefer to move their eyes and hand to the same spatial location. Public Library of Science 2015-12-04 /pmc/articles/PMC4670101/ /pubmed/26636966 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0144193 Text en © 2015 Ross et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Ross, Alasdair Iain
Schenk, Thomas
Hesse, Constanze
The Effect of Gaze Position on Reaching Movements in an Obstacle Avoidance Task
title The Effect of Gaze Position on Reaching Movements in an Obstacle Avoidance Task
title_full The Effect of Gaze Position on Reaching Movements in an Obstacle Avoidance Task
title_fullStr The Effect of Gaze Position on Reaching Movements in an Obstacle Avoidance Task
title_full_unstemmed The Effect of Gaze Position on Reaching Movements in an Obstacle Avoidance Task
title_short The Effect of Gaze Position on Reaching Movements in an Obstacle Avoidance Task
title_sort effect of gaze position on reaching movements in an obstacle avoidance task
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4670101/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26636966
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0144193
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