Target of initial sub-movement in multi-component arm-reaching strategy

Goal-directed human reaching often involves multi-component strategy with sub-movements. In general, the initial sub-movement is fast and less precise to bring the limb’s endpoint in the vicinity of the target as soon as possible. The final sub-movement then corrects the error accumulated during the previous sub-movement in order to reach the target. We investigate properties of a temporary target of the initial sub-movement. We hypothesise that the peak spatial dispersion of movement trajectories in the axis perpendicular to the movement is in front of the final reaching target, and that it indicates the temporary target of the initial sub-movement. The reasoning is that the dispersion accumulates, due to signal-dependent noise during the initial sub-movement, until the final corrective sub-movement is initiated, which then reduces the dispersion to successfully reach the actual target. We also hypothesise that the reaching movement distance and size of the actual target affect the properties of the temporary target of the initial sub-movement. The increased reaching movement distance increases the magnitude of peak dispersion and moves its location away from the actual target. On the other hand, the increased target size increases the magnitude of peak dispersion and moves its location closer to the actual target.