Changes in error-correction behavior according to visuomotor maps in goal-directed projection tasks

Humans can move objects to target positions out of their reach with certain accuracy by throwing or hitting them with tools. However, the outcome—the final object position—after the same movement varies due to various internal and external factors. Therefore, to improve outcome accuracy, humans correct their movements in the following trial as necessary by estimating the relationship between movement and visual outcome (visuomotor map). In the present study, we compared participants’ error-correction behaviors to visual errors under three conditions, wherein the relationship between joystick movement direction and cursor projection direction on the monitor covertly differed. This allowed us to examine whether the error-correction behavior changed depending on the visuomotor map. Moreover, to determine whether participants maintain the visuomotor map regardless of the visual error size (cursor projection) and proprioceptive errors (joystick movement), we for the first time focused on whether temporary visual errors deviating from the conventional relationship between joystick movement direction and cursor projection direction (i.e., visual perturbation) are ignored. The visual information was occasionally perturbed in two ways to create a situation wherein the visual error was larger or smaller than the proprioceptive error. We found that participants changed their error-correction behaviors according to the conditions and could ignore visual perturbations. This suggests that humans can be implicitly aware of differences in visuomotor maps and adapt accordingly to visual errors. NEW & NOTEWORTHY We found that participants changed their error-correction behaviors according to the conditions and could ignore visual perturbations. This suggests that humans can be implicitly aware of differences in visuomotor maps and adapt accordingly to visual errors. These findings provide suggestions for how to notice and adapt our movements to the environment and our own dynamically changing conditions, to perform accurate movements consistently.