Article ID: 2013-1201
In one-handed catching behavior, binocular visual information such as retinal disparity and vergence, as well as monocular depth cues, can be used to control the motor effector’s motion. Typical virtual devices that are equipped with a stereoscopic display provide binocular depth cues by presenting two offset images to each eye, and are increasingly being used in the assessment of perceptual motor skills. The aims of this study were first to demonstrate the effect of stereoscopic display on catching performance by comparing with the effect of monoscopic display in a virtual environment, and second to investigate a relationship between catching performance in a virtual setting and in a real-world setting. In the virtual environment experiment, 12 participants performed a one-handed simulated catching task in an immersive virtual system called CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment). Two display conditions (2D, 3D) by the setting of offset image parameter and 3 speed conditions (low, medium, and fast) for the approaching virtual ball were arranged for visual stimuli. According to analysis of variance, the percentage of correct catches was higher in the 3D condition than in the 2D condition in the medium speed condition. In the real-world experiment, the same participants performed a one-handed actual catching task that almost duplicated the settings of the virtual environment experiment. For the percentage of correct catches, it was shown that the medium speed conditions of the 2D condition and the 3D condition in the virtual environment experiment had significantly positive correlations with the low speed condition in the real-world experiment. These findings imply that the binocular depth cues from stereoscopic display contribute to catching performance, and suggest that the motor skill in real-world settings may be reflected by the catching performance in a virtual environment. Furthermore, the availabilities and limitations of using a virtual environment for catching tasks are argued in terms of system delay and environmental setting.
