Visual Noise Linearly Influences Tracking Performance

This study investigates the influence of visual noise on motor performance in three degrees of freedom (DoFs) tracking task including translation against gravity and rotation. Participants were asked to follow a moving target, visually degraded according to four different levels of noise, plus one no-noise condition. Each noise level was represented with ten target replicas normally distributed around the main target's pose with a specific standard deviation. Performance, in term of error between cursor and target, significantly decreased (p < 0.001) with the increase of the standard deviation of the visual noise, in all movement directions. The relation between the level of visual noise and the performance appears to be linear (R² > 0.8) for each DoF separately, as well as when we combine the translations using the Euclidean norm.