Very Slow Search and Reach: Failure to Maximize Expected Gain in an Eye-hand Coordination Task

Overview

Journal PLoS Comput Biol

Specialty Biology

Date 2012 Oct 17

PMID 23071430

Citations 4

Authors

Hang Zhang

Camille Morvan

Louis-Alexandre Etezad-Heydari

Laurence T Maloney

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

We examined an eye-hand coordination task where optimal visual search and hand movement strategies were inter-related. Observers were asked to find and touch a target among five distractors on a touch screen. Their reward for touching the target was reduced by an amount proportional to how long they took to locate and reach to it. Coordinating the eye and the hand appropriately would markedly reduce the search-reach time. Using statistical decision theory we derived the sequence of interrelated eye and hand movements that would maximize expected gain and we predicted how hand movements should change as the eye gathered further information about target location. We recorded human observers' eye movements and hand movements and compared them with the optimal strategy that would have maximized expected gain. We found that most observers failed to adopt the optimal search-reach strategy. We analyze and describe the strategies they did adopt.

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