Perception action interaction: the oblique effect in the evolving trajectory of arm pointing movements

In previous studies, we provided evidence for a directional distortion of the endpoints of movements to memorized target locations. This distortion was similar to a perceptual distortion in direction discrimination known as the oblique effect so we named it the “motor oblique effect”. In this report we analyzed the directional errors during the evolution of the movement trajectory in memory guided and visually guided pointing movements and compared them with directional errors in a perceptual experiment of arrow pointing. We observed that the motor oblique effect was present in the evolving trajectory of both memory and visually guided reaching movements. In memory guided pointing the motor oblique effect did not disappear during trajectory evolution while in visually guided pointing the motor oblique effect disappeared with decreasing distance from the target and was smaller in magnitude compared to the perceptual oblique effect and the memory motor oblique effect early on after movement initiation. The motor oblique effect in visually guided pointing increased when reaction time was small and disappeared with larger reaction times. The results are best explained using the hypothesis that a low level oblique effect is present for visually guided pointing movements and this effect is corrected by a mechanism that does not depend on visual feedback from the trajectory evolution and might even be completed during movement planning. A second cognitive oblique effect is added in the perceptual estimation of direction and affects the memory guided pointing movements. It is finally argued that the motor oblique effect can be a useful probe for the study of perception–action interaction.