Slightly perturbing the arm influences choices between multiple targets

Veronica Hadjipanayi*, Eli Brenner, Emily M. Crowe

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

We constantly make choices about how to interact with objects in the environment. Do we immediately consider changes in our posture when making such choices? To find out, we examined whether motion in the background, which is known to influence the trajectory of goal-directed hand movements, influences participants’ choices when suddenly faced with two options. The participants’ task was to tap on as many sequentially presented targets as possible within 90 seconds. Sometime after a new target appeared, it split into two targets and participants had to choose which of them to hit. Shortly before the split, the background moved in a way that was expected to result in the finger shifting slightly towards one of the two new targets. We examined whether such shifts influenced the choice between the two targets. The moving background influenced the finger movements in the expected manner: participants moved in the direction of the background motion. It also influenced the choice that participants made between the two targets: participants more frequently chose the target in the direction of the background motion. There was a positive correlation across participants between the magnitude of the response to background motion and the bias to choose the target in the direction of such motion. Thus, people consider sudden changes in their posture when choosing between different movement options.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1777-1783
Number of pages7
JournalAttention, Perception, and Psychophysics
Volume85
Issue number6
Early online date28 Feb 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) under project number 464.18.111 awarded to Eli Brenner and by the Experimental Psychological Society (EPS) Study Visit Grant (SVO122-05) awarded to Veronica Hadjipanayi. This experiment was not preregistered. The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study and the code used for analysis are available on the Open Science Framework (OSF) (https://osf.io/cwkz2/). Code for running the experiment is available upon request.

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) under project number 464.18.111 awarded to Eli Brenner and by the Experimental Psychological Society (EPS) Study Visit Grant (SVO122-05) awarded to Veronica Hadjipanayi.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).

Funding

This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) under project number 464.18.111 awarded to Eli Brenner and by the Experimental Psychological Society (EPS) Study Visit Grant (SVO122-05) awarded to Veronica Hadjipanayi. This experiment was not preregistered. The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study and the code used for analysis are available on the Open Science Framework (OSF) (https://osf.io/cwkz2/). Code for running the experiment is available upon request. This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) under project number 464.18.111 awarded to Eli Brenner and by the Experimental Psychological Society (EPS) Study Visit Grant (SVO122-05) awarded to Veronica Hadjipanayi.

Keywords

  • Background motion
  • Fast choices
  • Interception task
  • Perturbations
  • Posture

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Slightly perturbing the arm influences choices between multiple targets'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this