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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 14, 2026

Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior

Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior

Published on: April 16, 2014

In manually-assisted search, perception supervises rather than directs action.

Grayden J F Solman¹, Nicholas Wu, J Allan Cheyne

¹Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. grayden@psych.ubc.ca

Experimental Psychology

|February 21, 2013

Summary

During manual search, people often move targets before recognizing them. This study shows that slowing down motor actions reduces this perception-action decoupling error.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Human-Computer Interaction
Motor Control

Background:

Manually-assisted search tasks involve participants actively manipulating items.
A known error is selecting and moving search targets without recognition.
This error may stem from a decoupling of perception and action.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the hypothesis that search errors arise from perception-action decoupling.
To explore if motor interactions outpace perceptual analysis during search.
To identify the underlying mechanisms of this specific search error.

Main Methods:

Two experiments were conducted to test the perception-action decoupling hypothesis.
Experiment 1 examined error prevalence across mouse and touch-screen interactions, with varying speed instructions.
Experiment 2 manipulated individual motor movement speed during search.

Main Results:

The error occurred frequently with both mouse and touch-screen interactions.
Speeding or slowing instructions did not influence the error rate in Experiment 1.
Reducing motor movement speed significantly decreased error rates in Experiment 2.

Conclusions:

The findings support the perception-action decoupling hypothesis in manual search.
Motor processes outpacing perceptual abilities contribute to search errors.
Incoordination between motor and perceptual systems is a key factor in this search behavior.