Hand deviations toward distracters - Evidence for response competition

It has been suggested that, when movements are planned within cluttered environments, competing responses programmed to distracting stimuli are inhibited based on their relation to the action being performed. Further, as a result of this inhibition, the path of the movement made to the target object deviates away from the distractor. In contrast to the object avoidance hypothesis, the results of the present study show that, for aiming movements made in environments in which distracters are present, the path of the movement veers toward the distracter. Moreover, the effects of the distracters on the movement trajectory were independent of the direction of limb movement. These findings suggest that, when a distracter is not a potential physical barrier, a response to the distracter may be activated along with the target response and, owing to temporal advantages, cause a deviation of the movement trajectory toward the distractor.