Recruitment of a novel cue for active control depends on control dynamics

Abstract

We investigated how the visual-motor system recruits a novel visual feedback cue for a manual control task. We presented conditions in which an arbitrary cue (color) was coupled with task-relevant feedback (position or velocity), and measured the effect of the novel cue on performance. Participants used a joystick to keep a moving horizontal line centered on a display under velocity or acceleration control dynamics. Participants normally rely primarily on line position feedback for velocity control and line velocity feedback for acceleration control. The novel color cue was coupled with either line position (becoming red as it deviates from center) or line velocity (becoming red as it moves faster). For velocity control, performance error was smaller and response gain was larger when the novel color cue was coupled with line position than when it was coupled with line velocity. Conversely, for acceleration control, performance was better when color was coupled with line velocity than with line position. Our findings show that the visual-motor system can recruit a novel arbitrary cue to improve active control performance, but the effectiveness of the novel cue depends on its relationship to the feedback appropriate for control dynamics.

Influence of optic flow on the control of heading and target egocentric direction during steering toward a goal

“…4. The duration of each trial was 95 s. Following previous studies on manual control (Li et al 2005(Li et al , 2006aLi WO et al 2009), all chosen frequencies for the vehicular heading and orientation perturbations went through an integer number of cycles in 90 s, and we added 5 s in each trial, such that we could skip the initial transient response at the beginning of the trial.…”

The learning of visually guided action: An information-space analysis of pole balancing.

“…Learning can therefore be portrayed as the process by which individuals gradually change from less useful to more useful informational variables. This process has been observed with verbal estimates (Jacobs, Runeson, & Michaels, 2001;Michaels & de Vries, 1998;Runeson, Juslin, & Olsson, 2000;Withagen & Michaels, 2005), ballistic actions (Fajen & Devaney, 2006;Smith, Flach, Dittman, & Stanard, 2001), and actions that are not ballistic (Fajen, 2008a(Fajen, , 2008bLi, Saunders, & Li, 2009). Jacobs and Michaels (2007) proposed that informational variables can be portrayed as forming a continuous space, referred to as information space.…”

“…actions that are not ballistic (Fajen, 2008a(Fajen, , 2008bLi, Saunders, & Li, 2009). Jacobs and Michaels (2007) proposed that informational variables can be portrayed as forming a continuous space, referred to as information space.…”

Influence of Hemianopic Visual Field Loss on Visual Motor Control

“…It has also been shown that human operators can perform such a closed-loop visual motor control task under various controller dynamics [32], [33], [34]. Based on these findings, Li et al have developed a simple closed-loop visual motor control task that involves controlling a randomly moving visual target on the screen to evaluate how the visual system uses different sources of visual information for the control of target motion [35], [36], and how the recruitment of new visual information for visual motor control is affected by controller dynamics [37].…”

“…In the current study, we used a simple closed-loop visual motor control task similar to that developed by Li et al [35], [36], [37] to evaluate the visual motor control abilities of HH patients. The goal was to compare the control performance of HH patients to that of a group of age-matched normally sighted participants to determine the extent to which the visual impairment in HH patients affects their ability to effectively use visual information for online control of a moving target.…”