Abstract
Two experiments investigated the hypothesis that the experience of manually pointing at visual targets enhances motoric adaptation to prism-displaced vision. Experiment 1 indicated that when adaptation was measured by means of redirected pointing behavior (negative aftereffect) it varied directly with the specificity of the target, the least adaptation occurring when no target was available. This relationship was not observed when adaptation was measured in terms of a shift in the felt position of the prism-exposed hand (proprioceptive shift). Experiment 2 demonstrated that after double the prism-exposure trials used in Experiment 1, target-pointing experience continued to enhance adaptation (as indexed by both types of adaptation measure). In both experiments negative aftereffect was significantly larger than proprioceptive shift for all experimental conditions and the two measures were not correlated. These latter two findings cast doubt on Harris’s notion that negative aftereffect is entirely the result of altered position sense.
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The experiments described formed the basis of a doctoral dissertation that was completed at the University of Oregon, June, 1967. The author wishes to thank Drs. Fred Attneave, Jacob Beck, and Robert Leeper, whose suggestions and criticisms aided immeasurably in the successful completion of this dissertation.
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Welch, R.B. Adaptation to prism-displaced vision: The importance of target-pointing. Perception & Psychophysics 5, 305–309 (1969). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03209569
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03209569