The utilisation of visual information in the control of rapid interceptive actions

When intercepting a moving target, accurate timing depends, in part, upon starting to move at the right moment. It is generally believed that this is achieved by triggering motor command generation when a visually perceived quantity such as the target's time-to-arrival reaches a specific criterion value. An experimental method that could be used to determine the moment when this visual event happens was introduced by Whiting and coworkers in the 1970s, and it involves occluding the vision of the target at different times prior to the time of movement onset (MO). This method is limited because the experimenter has no control over MO time. We suggest a method which provides the needed control by having people make interceptive movements of a specific duration. We tested the efficacy of this method in two experiments in which the accuracy of interception was examined under different occlusion conditions. In the first experiment, we examined the effect of changing the timing of an occlusion period (OP) of fixed duration (200 ms). In the second experiment, we varied the duration of the OP (180-430 ms) as well as its timing. The results demonstrated the utility of the proposed method and showed that performance deteriorated only when the participants had their vision occluded from 200 ms prior to MO. The results of Experiment 2 were able to narrow down the critical interval to trigger the interceptive action to within the period from 200 to 150 ms prior to MO, probably closer to 150 ms. In addition, the results showed that the execution of brief interceptive movements (180 ms) was not affected by the range of OPs used in the experiments. This indicates that the whole movement was prepared in advance and triggered by a visual stimulus event that occurred at about 150 ms before onset.