VISUAL FEEDBACK IMPROVES THE EFFICIENCY OF ANTICIPATORY FORCE CONTROL EVEN WHEN OBJECT PROPERTIES ARE NOT SALIENT

Abstract

Anticipatory force control is the ability to plan the amount of force needed to successfully manipulate an object and is known to predominantly rely on two key aspects: sensorimotor memories derived from previous experience with the same or similar object and visual feedback of object properties (e.g., size, texture, density). However, visual feedback does not always provide congruent information about an object’s properties. In such instances, it has been assumed that subjects predominantly anticipate forces through learned experience with the object (i.e., sensorimotor memory). I question whether anticipatory force control that relies on sensorimotor memories is aided by visual feedback of the hand and of the object, even when these visual cues are incongruent with an underlying key property. To study the contribution of visual feedback for planning object manipulation when it is incongruent with a key property of the object, we manipulated the availability of visual feedback as subjects learned to lift and minimize tilt of a symmetrical object with a hidden uneven mass distribution (N=48). Participants had to generate a torque anticipatorily at lift onset to successfully minimize tilt of the object. The results of this study support the hypothesis that even when visual feedback cues are incongruent with a key property of an object, the availability of visual feedback helps access the sensorimotor memories needed to anticipate the forces required to successfully manipulate an object.