The impact of gain change on perceiving one's own actions

Tool use often challenges the human motor system, especially when these tools require sensorimotor transformations. We report an experiment using a digitizer tablet, in which different gains are introduced between the hand movement (proximal effect) and the intended action effect presented on a display (distal effect). The question is how one’s own movements are perceived in this situation. With regard to an action-effect account movements are represented and controlled by anticipating the movement effects. As a consequence, participants should be less aware of their own hand movements. The reason for this is that what counts for a successful tool use is the representation of the distal effect, not the proximal effect. Our results supported this view. Potential application of this research includes the optimization of the HCI with the imperceptible gain method. It benefits from the human flexibility to compensate for and adapt to smaller biases without any costs.