Action–perception dissociation in response to target acceleration

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether information about the acceleration characteristics of a moving target can be used for both action and perception. Also of interest was whether prior movement experience altered perceptual judgements. Participants manually intercepted targets moving with various acceleration, velocity and movement time characteristics. They also made perceptual judgements about the acceleration characteristics of these targets either with or without prior manual interception experience. Results showed that while aiming kinematics were sensitive to the acceleration characteristics of the target, participants were only able to perceptually discriminate the velocity characteristics of target motion, even after performing interceptive actions to the same targets. These results are discussed in terms of a two channel (action-perception) model of visuomotor control.