Watching a cursor distorts haptically guided reproduction of mouse movement

Participants moved a mouse along a force-feedback-defined linear path, either without vision or while watching a cursor set to 1 of 3 levels of visual:haptic gain (all >1:1). They attempted to haptically reproduce the movement without visual feedback. Errors increased with gain, reaching 70% overestimation at the highest gain. Forewarning participants about gain variability did not eliminate this effect. The gain level was potentially cued during the movement by the mismatch between visual feedback and kinesthetic feedback. Moreover, because participants did not achieve cursor-speed constancy across gain levels, visual speed was another cue to gain. Collectively, these cues failed to prevent visual distortion of movement reproduction.