Physical endpoint contact enhances visuomotor control beyond vibrotactile feedback in virtual reality
Abstract
When reaching for a visually defined target, sensory information not only guides the preparation and execution of the reaching response but also serves as a crucial source of error feedback. Research on visually guided reaching has typically emphasised the contribution of visual feedback to movement preparation and execution. However, visually guided reaching also depends on non-visual sensory information. Here, we focus on the role of haptic endpoint feedback and visual hand feedback and how they interact to regulate behaviour. Thirty-six participants completed a rapid reaching task using a virtual reality head-mounted display, allowing us to manipulate endpoint haptic feedback and visual feedback of the moving hand. Participants completed a vibrotactile feedback condition, providing vibration feedback to the fingertip upon target touch, and a vibrotactile and physical contact feedback condition, providing additional physical surface contact. On 25% of trials, the virtual hand disappeared after movement initiation. The addition of physical contact led participants to initiate movement earlier, increase movement times, and spend proportionally more time decelerating, resulting in improved endpoint accuracy. Across kinematic measures, the effects of physical contact did not interact with visual hand feedback. Additionally, of six presence and embodiment items, only the item asking whether touch felt like one's own differed between conditions. Overall, these findings suggest physical contact improves visuomotor control beyond vibrotactile feedback alone. However, this advantage appears to be selective, increasing the realism of touch rather than overall presence or embodiment and not compensating for a loss of visual feedback of the hand.
Related
- Mechanonociceptive tactile feedback enhances prosthetic grasp control during repeated human-in-the-loop interaction
- Adaptation in somatosensory afferents improves rate and temporal coding of vibrotactile stimulus features
- Vibrotactile stimulation on the upper back requires stronger vibration during goal-directed reaching but does not impede reaching performance
- Spatio-temporal control of vibrotactile stimulation on OLED displays with inverse filtering
- Remembering touch: Somatosensory cortex supports long-term memory for dynamic vibrotactile patterns.
BibTeX
@misc{king2026physical,
title = {{Physical endpoint contact enhances visuomotor control beyond vibrotactile feedback in virtual reality}},
author = {Ryan King and Guy Wallis},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/76sgy_v1},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/76sgy_v1/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Physical endpoint contact enhances visuomotor control beyond vibrotactile feedback in virtual reality
AU - Ryan King
AU - Guy Wallis
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/16
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/76sgy_v1
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/76sgy_v1/
AB - When reaching for a visually defined target, sensory information not only guides the preparation and execution of the reaching response but also serves as a crucial source of error feedback. Research on visually guided reaching has typically emphasised the contribution of visual feedback to movement preparation and execution. However, visually guided reaching also depends on non-visual sensory information. Here, we focus on the role of haptic endpoint feedback and visual hand feedback and how they interact to regulate behaviour. Thirty-six participants completed a rapid reaching task using a virtual reality head-mounted display, allowing us to manipulate endpoint haptic feedback and visual feedback of the moving hand. Participants completed a vibrotactile feedback condition, providing vibration feedback to the fingertip upon target touch, and a vibrotactile and physical contact feedback condition, providing additional physical surface contact. On 25% of trials, the virtual hand disappeared after movement initiation. The addition of physical contact led participants to initiate movement earlier, increase movement times, and spend proportionally more time decelerating, resulting in improved endpoint accuracy. Across kinematic measures, the effects of physical contact did not interact with visual hand feedback. Additionally, of six presence and embodiment items, only the item asking whether touch felt like one's own differed between conditions. Overall, these findings suggest physical contact improves visuomotor control beyond vibrotactile feedback alone. However, this advantage appears to be selective, increasing the realism of touch rather than overall presence or embodiment and not compensating for a loss of visual feedback of the hand.
ER -