Müller-Lyer illusion effect on a reaching movement in simultaneous presentation of visual and haptic/kinesthetic cues

This paper describes the effect of Müller-Lyer illusion on a reaching movement just after the visual and haptic/kinesthetic cues are simultaneously presented. First, a standard experiment on this visual illusion is conducted by means of the most typical way so as to make sure that participants can experience this illusion; the result shows that all the subjects are deceived by the illusion figure as in many previous results. As the next step, the subjects are asked to physically trace one of three lines-normal line and lines with feathers of an arrow-with the same length displayed on an LCD. After a few traces, the line suddenly vanishes, and then the subjects retrace the invisible line based on only their memory and somatic sensations. During this task, we measure the trajectory of fingertip from a start to the goal using a motion capture system. The result indicates that the Müller-Lyer illusion dominantly affects the reaching task although the haptic/kinesthetic cue was also given just before the task. Thus, this result implies that the visual illusion affects the motion planning, which partly supports a planning-motion model.