Pointing with the ankle: the speed-accuracy trade-off

Abstract

This study investigated the trade-off between speed and accuracy in pointing movements with the ankle during goal-directed movements in dorsal–plantar (DP) and inversion–eversion (IE). Nine subjects completed a series of discrete pointing movements with the ankle between spatial targets of varying difficulty. Six different target sets were presented, with a range of task difficulty between 2.2 and 3.8 bits of information. Our results demonstrated that for visually evoked, visually guided discrete DP and IE ankle pointing movements, performance can be described by a linear function, as predicted by Fitts’ law. These results support our ongoing effort to develop an adaptive algorithm employing the speed-accuracy trade-off concept to control our pediatric anklebot while delivering therapy for children with cerebral palsy.