Location but not amount of stimulus occlusion influences the stability of visuo-motor coordination.

The current study examined whether the amount and location of available movement information influenced the stability of visuo-motor coordination. Participants coordinated a hand-held pendulum with an oscillating visual stimulus in an inphase and antiphase manner. The effects of occluding different amounts of phase at different phase locations were examined. Occluding the 0 degrees /180 degrees phase locations (end-points) significantly increased the variability of the visuo-motor coordination. The amount of occlusion had little or no affect on the stability of the coordination. We concluded that the end-points of a visual rhythm are privileged and provide access to movement information that ensures stable coordination. The results are discussed with respect to the proposal of Bingham and colleagues (e.g., Bingham GP. Ecol Psychol 16:45-53, 2004a; Wilson AD, Collins DR, Bingham GP. Exp Brain Res 165:351-361, 2005a) that the relevant information for rhythmic visual coordination is relative direction information.