PSYCHOLOGY MASTER'S THESIS ABSTRACT

Susan Taylor

Industrial/Organizational
May 1993
 

The Effects of Obstructions on Arm Movement Time During Reach and Positioning Tasks

    Complex manual tasks can be broken down into simple motor elements to analyze the effect of each movement on the overall task time.  The purpose of this study was to investigate the fundamental issues of how an obstruction affects movement time during reach and positioning tasks and how well these times can be predicted by a model such as Fitts’ Law.  Results indicated that movement times increased in conditions where space around the target was limited by the obstruction being positioned more closely to the target, with one exception that yielded shorter times.  Another condition with a farther located obstruction hypothesized to yield shorter times resulted in longer movement times. Subjects reported that the difficulty in those conditions with longer movement times was attributable more to the inability to see the target during the motion than to the lack of positioning space, emphasizing the role played by visual feedback during the task.

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