IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0041190.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is Fitts’ Law Continuous in Discrete Aiming?

Author

Listed:
  • Rita Sleimen-Malkoun
  • Jean-Jacques Temprado
  • Raoul Huys
  • Viktor Jirsa
  • Eric Berton

Abstract

The lawful continuous linear relation between movement time and task difficulty (i.e., index of difficulty; ID) in a goal-directed rapid aiming task (Fitts’ law) has been recently challenged in reciprocal performance. Specifically, a discontinuity was observed at critical ID and was attributed to a transition between two distinct dynamic regimes that occurs with increasing difficulty. In the present paper, we show that such a discontinuity is also present in discrete aiming when ID is manipulated via target width (experiment 1) but not via target distance (experiment 2). Fitts’ law’s discontinuity appears, therefore, to be a suitable indicator of the underlying functional adaptations of the neuro-muscular-skeletal system to task properties/requirements, independently of reciprocal or discrete nature of the task. These findings open new perspectives to the study of dynamic regimes involved in discrete aiming and sensori-motor mechanisms underlying the speed-accuracy trade-off.

Suggested Citation

  • Rita Sleimen-Malkoun & Jean-Jacques Temprado & Raoul Huys & Viktor Jirsa & Eric Berton, 2012. "Is Fitts’ Law Continuous in Discrete Aiming?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(7), pages 1-6, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0041190
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0041190
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0041190
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0041190&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0041190?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0041190. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.