The effect of visuo-motor transformations on hand-foot coordination: evidence in favor of the incongruency hypothesis

Understanding how multiple constraints contribute to the emergence of coordinated behavior has been the topic of considerable debate in cognitive sciences. The present experiment addressed the issue of the effects of visual motion structures (iso- and non-isodirectionality) on the stability of hand-foot coordination patterns. Visuo-motor transformations-decorrelating the perceived movement direction from the actually generated direction-were applied to both in-phase and anti-phase patterns. Two mutually exclusive hypotheses-the “visual grouping hypothesis” and the “incongruency hypothesis”-were tested. The results indicated that both conditions of transformed visual feedback destabilized the actual performed coordination patterns. Thus, despite the existence of common underlying principles that govern both the perceived motion pattern and the generation of hand-foot coordination patterns, it appeared that perceptual grouping principles were not exploited to monitor the production of coordination. These results strongly suggest that the congruency between the performed pattern and the perceived visual feedback is the primary factor determining the (in)stability of hand-foot coordination patterns.