Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 19, 2026
Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior
Published on: April 16, 2014
The effect of removing visual information on reach control in young children
Erin Babinsky1, Oliver Braddick, Janette Atkinson
1School of Optometry, Indiana University, 800 E. Atwater Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. ebabinsk@indiana.edu
Insights
Young children’s reaching movements are affected by visual feedback. Removing vision impacts movement planning and object grasping, with memory decay affecting accuracy over time.
Area of Science:
- Developmental psychology
- Motor control
- Human visual perception
Background:
- Visual information is crucial for guiding reaching movements.
- Both feedforward and feedback mechanisms are affected by the absence of visual cues.
- Understanding how children utilize visual information is key to developmental motor studies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how 4- to 5-year-old children use visual information to guide reaching movements.
- To examine the effects of different visual conditions on reaching kinematics and endpoint accuracy.
- To explore the role of visual memory in target localization and object retrieval.
Main Methods:
- Children performed reaching movements in four visual conditions: full light, glowing object in darkness, and complete darkness with 0-s and 4-s delays.
- Kinematic data (reach curvature, duration, time-to-peak-velocity) and grasping success were recorded.
- Miss rates and object contact were analyzed across conditions.
Main Results:
- Reduced vision (glowing condition) led to more curved reaches and longer durations, but similar grasping success compared to the light.
- Complete darkness significantly decreased grasping success and increased misses (14-31%).
- A higher miss rate in the 4-s dark delay condition suggests visual memory decay for target position.
Conclusions:
- Vision of the hand and reach space influences movement planning and feedback control.
- Absence of object vision in darkness impairs endpoint control and object retrieval.
- While young children show some adult-like reach adjustments, their predictive control and visual memory are still developing.
Abstract:
Visual information about the hand, the reach space, and a target can all contribute to the control of a reaching movement. When visual information is removed, both feedforward mechanisms (involved in planning the movement) and feedback mechanisms (involved in correcting errors) may be affected. This study looks at how 4- to 5-year-old children use visual information to guide reaching movements. Children reached for a toy object in four conditions--in the light, in the dark while the toy was glowing, and in complete darkness after a 0-s delay and a 4-s delay. When a reach in the glowing condition was compared with a reach in the light, reaches were more curved, had a longer duration, and earlier time-to-peak-velocity than a reach in the light but the number of grasping responses were comparable to in the light condition. When a reach in the two dark conditions (0- and 4-s) was compared with a reach in the light, the number of grasping responses decreased and 14 and 31 % of reaches resulted in a miss, that is, no contact was made with the object. While we did not find any significant kinematic differences between the 0- and 4-s dark conditions, there was a significantly larger number of misses in the 4-s dark condition, suggesting that memory of target position may decay over time. Overall, removing vision of the hand and reach space in the glowing condition appears to affect the planning of a reach (as vision of the hand was not available at reach initiation) and feedback control, while removing vision of the object in the dark conditions has an effect on endpoint response as we found that children experience difficulty retrieving the object in the dark. While young children demonstrate more adult-like reach control (i.e., relatively longer deceleration time, increased reach duration) under reduced feedback conditions, they have difficulty retrieving the object in the dark, particularly after a 4-s delay, and it is possible that mechanisms guiding predictive control and visual memory are still developing.
