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Updated: Aug 5, 2026

Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior
Published on: April 16, 2014
Predicting the 'where' and resolving the 'what' of a moving target: a dichotomy of abilities
1Department of Psychology, Villanova University, PA 19085, USA. glong@email.vill.edu
Abstract:
Anticipation timing (AT) and dynamic visual acuity (DVA) were assessed in a group of college students (n = 60) under a range of velocity and duration conditions. Subjects participated in two identical sessions 1 week apart. Consistently with previous work, DVA performance worsened as velocity increased and as target duration decreased; and there was a significant improvement from the first to the second session. In contrast, AT performance improved as velocity increased, whereas no improvement from the first to the second session was indicated; but increasing duration again benefited performance. Correlational analyses comparing DVA and AT did not reveal any systematic relationship between the two visual tasks. A follow-up study with different instructions on the AT task revealed the same pattern of AT performance, suggesting the generalizability of the obtained stimulus relationships for the AT task. The importance of the often-overlooked role of stimulus variables on the AT task is discussed.
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