Predictability is necessary for closed-loop visual feedback delay adaptation.

By Marieke Rohde, Loes C. J. van Dam, Marc O. Ernst. 2014

55 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In case of delayed visual feedback during visuomotor tasks, like in some sluggish computer games, humans can modulate their behavior to compensate for the delay. However, opinions on the nature of this compensation diverge. Some studies suggest that humans adapt to feedback delays with lasting changes in motor behavior (aftereffects) and a recalibration of time perception. Other studies have shown little or no evidence for such semipermanent recalibration in the temporal domain. We hypothesize that predictability of the reference signal (target to be tracked) is necessary for semipermanent delay adaptation. To test this hypothesis, we trained participants with a 200 ms visual feedback delay in a visually guided manual tracking task, varying the predictability of the reference signal between conditions, but keeping reference motion and feedback delay constant. In Experiment 1, we focused on motor behavior. Only training in the predictable condition brings about all of the adaptive changes and aftereffects expected from delay adaptation. In Experiment 2, we used a synchronization task to investigate perceived simultaneity (perceptuomotor learning). Supporting the hypothesis, participants recalibrated subjective visuomotor simultaneity only when trained in the predictable condition. Such a shift in perceived simultaneity was also observed in Experiment 3, using an interval estimation task. These results show that delay adaptation in motor control can modulate the perceived temporal alignment of vision and kinesthetically sensed movement. The coadaptation of motor prediction and target prediction (reference extrapolation) seems necessary for such genuine delay adaptation. This offers an explanation for divergent results in the literature.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. German Ignacio Parisi
2. Stefan Wermter
3. Hugo Merchant
4. Luiza Mici

Citations in the corpus

• An Incremental Self-Organizing Architecture for Sensorimotor Learning and Prediction (2017, background): “Not only do we predict sensorimotor events in our everyday tasks but we also constantly adjust our delay compensation mechanisms to the sensory feedback [10] and to the specific task [11].”
• How the motor system both encodes and influences our sense of time (2016, background): “[35*]) and can also be induced by delayedfeedback tracking tasks [39].”
• Dealing with delays does not transfer across sensorimotor tasks. (2014, background): “Rohde et al. (2014) adapted subjects to delayed feedback in a manual tracking task and found some transfer to synchronizing hand movements with a sinusoidally moving visual stimulus as well as to judging the relative timing of a flash and a reversal in the hand movement.”