Citation

Young SJ, Pratt J, Chau T. Exp. Brain Res. 2009; 192(1): 121-132.

Affiliation

Bloorview Research Institute, 150 Kilgour Road, Toronto, ON, M4G 1R8, Canada, scottj.young@utoronto.ca.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s00221-008-1563-x

PMID

18807021

Abstract

Research has suggested that prospective motor decisions are consistent with actual motor action. In a study that we recently published (Young et al. in Exp Brain Res 185:681-688, 2008), however, participants demonstrated a preference for closer targets that was inconsistent with the predictions of Fitts's law. With a pair of experiments, the present paper investigates the underlying basis of this non-optimal behaviour. Participants showed a similar deviation from Fitts's law when imagining movements-believing that movement duration increased with distance within the same index of difficulty. Participants did not behave similarly, however, in a perceptual version of the decision task. These results suggest that imagined movements and motor decisions are linked, as well as demonstrating one situation in which both show a similar deviation from the patterns of actual movement duration.

Language: en