Visual and kinesthetic control of goal-directed movements to visually and kinesthetically presented targets

The study investigated the contribution of kinesthetic and visual input to the performance of reaching movements and identified rules governing the transformation of information between these two sensory modalities. The study examined the accuracy by which 39 subjects reproduced locations of five targets in a horizontal plane. Mode of target presentation and feedback during reproduction of a target's location was either visual, kinesthetic or a combination of both modalities. Thus, it was possible to examine performance when target presentation and reproduction involved feedback from the same sensory modality (intramodal) as well as from different sensory modalities (intermodal). Errors in target reproduction were calculated in terms of distance and systematic biases in movement extent. The major findings of the study are (1) Intramodal reproduction of a target's location on the basis of kinesthetic feedback is somewhat less accurate than intramodal reproduction on the basis of visual feedback. (2) Intermodal performance is significantly less accurate than intramodal performance. (3) Accuracy of performance does not depend on the direction of information transfer between sensory modalities. (4) Intermodal performance is characterized by systematic biases in extent of movement which are dependent on the direction of information transfer between modalities. (5) When presentation of the target's location is bimodal, reproduction is adversely affected by the conflicting input. The results suggest that transformation rules, used to combine input from various sensory modalities, depend on environmental conditions and attention.