Angle-of-approach and reversal-movement effects in lateral manual interception

The present study sought to replicate two non-intuitive effects reported in the literature on lateral manual interception of uniformly moving targets, the angle-of-approach (AoA) effect and the reversal-movement (RM) effect. Both entail an influence of the target trajectory's incidence angle on the observed interceptive hand movements along the interception axis; they differ in the interception location considered. The AoA effect concerns all trajectory conditions requiring hand movement to allow successful interception, while the RM effect concerns the particular condition where the target will in fact arrive at the hand's initial position and no hand movement is therefore required but nevertheless regularly produced. Whereas the AoA effect has been systematically replicated, the RM effect has not. To determine whether the RM effect is in fact a reproducible phenomenon, we deployed a procedure enhancing the uncertainty about the target's future arrival locations with respect to the hand's initial position and included low-to-high target motion speeds. Results demonstrated the presence of both the AoA effect and the RM effect. The AoA effect was observed for all relevant interception locations, with the effect being stronger for the farther interception locations and the lower target speeds. The RM effect, with the hand first moving away from its initial position, in the direction of the target, before reversing direction, was observed in a higher proportion of trials for target trajectories with larger incidence angles and lower speeds. Earlier initiation gave rise to reversal movements of larger amplitude. Both effects point to visual guidance of hand movement partially based in reliance on information with respect to current lateral ball position. We conclude that the information used in lateral manual interception is of an intermediate order, which can be conceived as resulting from a partial combination of target position and velocity information or information in the form of a fractional order derivative.