Moving Backgrounds and Manual Control

Recent accounts describe the online control of goal directed movement as collaboration between processes of predictive forward-modeled control and spatiotemporally constrained feedback-driven control. Two experiments are presented that evaluate the impact background motion has on these two control processes. In each experiment, performers made aiming movements over backgrounds that translated in their peripheral visual field, their central visual field, or remained stationary. In Experiment 1 the background motion was away from the performer and in Experiment 2 the background motion was toward the performer. The results of the two studies provide some support for the notion that the two control processes can be isolated with manipulations unique to central and peripheral vision. The findings are discussed with respect to the problems inherent to independently evaluating forward-modeled and feedback derived control, as well as the omnipresent influence that a priori knowledge of the environmental context has on movement execution.