Choice Bimanual Aiming with Unequal Indices of Difficulty

摘要

Human performance response times are typically predicted using two models. Hick'sLaw, used to predict reaction time (RT), linearly relates RT to the information content of the stimulus. Fitts' Law linearly relates movement time (MT) to the difficulty (ID) of the particular task. Three studies were conducted to characterize temporal bimanual aiming performance. Pilot Study I verified Hick's and Fitts' Laws for unimanual tasks only. Pilot Study II established the validity of the stimulus-response board used as a testbed for bimanual tasks. The Main Study tested discrete, unimanual and bimanual visual aiming tasks. The number of target alternatives (N) varied to test Hick's Law. Task difficulty varied by changing movement amplitude and target width to test Fitts' Law. All task performance was affected by changing task difficulty of the opposite hand (OPID) for both the easy and difficult task hands. Both laws held under bimanual tasking with OPID held constant. RTand MT lengthened with increasing N, ID, and OPID. RT and MT were positively correlated for all bimanual tasks under all conditions. Results also showed little reaction and movement synchrony between hands. Multiple linear regression was used to examine RT, MT and total response time (TRT) bimanual models.