# Intercepting moving targets: does the visuomotor latency depend on whether one taps on the target or slides through it?

## TL;DR

This study found that the time it takes to adjust movements when intercepting moving targets is the same whether you tap or slide through them.

## Contribution

The study reveals that visuomotor latency is consistent across different interception movement types.

## Key findings

- Visuomotor latency was 114 ms for both tapping and sliding movements.
- The type of movement does not affect the latency of responses to target position changes.

## Abstract

When trying to intercept a moving target, one’s movements are continuously adjusted to match the latest information about the target’s position. Many target characteristics influence the latency of such adjustments. Does the kind of movement that is being made also influence this visuomotor latency? Since there are reasons to suspect that it might, we compared the latency of responses to sudden jumps in moving targets’ positions when making two quite different movements to intercept the targets: sliding one’s finger across a screen to pass through the moving targets and lifting one’s finger off the screen to tap on the targets. Twenty-two participants intercepted targets by making both these movements in two separate blocks of trials in counterbalanced order. Despite the substantial differences between the two kinds of movements, the latency of the responses was 114 ms for both. Thus, the visuomotor latency does not depend on the kind of movement that is made.