Device for measuring the precision of eye-hand coordination while tracking changing size.

Psychophysical evidence supports the idea that the human visual pathway computes an object's rate of change of angular size rather independently of the object's trajectory and rather independently of other visual parameters, including contrast and intensity. This independence could provide a basis for accurately judging the component of an object's velocity along a line through the eye in the working visual environment where many visual parameters vary simultaneously. We describe a procedure for quantifying a subject's ability to track changing size, and illustrate the procedure with preliminary experimental data. The subject's R.M.S. tracking errors are displayed in three frequency bands. Our device also measures the perturbing effect of sideways motion upon the subject's ability to track changing size. Such data may go some way to predict a subject's performance in tasks of eye-limb coordination, especially where visual information is largely restricted to the changing-size channel.