The Latency of Aiming Movements

Abstract

The latency of movements requiring successively more and more precision was investigated in three simple reaction time experiments. The movements involved a horizontal arm sweep aimed at small circular targets. The results failed to provide strong support for the hypothesis that movements, and hence motor programs, requiring greater precision had longer latencies. The results are discussed in terms of a neural organization hypothesis, relating change in response complexity to the spatial and temporal structure of the motor program.