Analyzing the kinematics of hand movements in catching tasks—An online correction analysis of movement toward the target’s trajectory

Slupinski Lena, de Lussanet de la Sablonière MHE, Wagner Heiko

Forschungsartikel (Zeitschrift)

Zusammenfassung

Free, 3D interceptive movements are difficult to visualize and quantify. For ball catching, the endpoint of a movement can be anywhere along the target’s trajectory. Furthermore, the hand may already begin to move before the subject has estimated the target’s trajectory and the subject may alter the targeted position during the initial part of the movement. We introduce a method to deal with these difficulties and to quantify three movement phases involved in catching: the initial non-goal directed phase, the goal-directed phase, which is smoothly directed towards the target’s trajectory, and the final interception phase. Therefore, the 3D movement of the hand was decomposed into a component towards the target’s trajectory (the Minimal Distance of the Hand to the target’s Parabolic trajectory, MDHP), and a component along this trajectory. To identify the goal-directed phase of the MDHP-trajectory, we employed the empirical finding that goal-directed trajectories are minimally jerky. The second component, along the target’s trajectory, was used to analyze the interaction of the hand with the ball. The method was applied to two conditions of a ball catching task. In the manipulated condition, the initial part of the ball’s flight was occluded, so the visibility of the ball was postponed. As expected, the onset of the smooth part of the movement shifted to a later time. This method can be used to quantify anticipatory behavior in interceptive tasks, allowing to gain new insights into movement planning towards the target’s trajectory.

Details zur Publikation

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
Sprache, in der die Publikation verfasst ist: Englisch