Oxyopia Abstract

November 15, 2002
Noon
489 Minor Hall

Michael Landy, PhD
Dept. Psychology and Center for Neural Science, New York University
Host: Martin Banks

Title

"Statistical decision theory and the selection of rapid, goal-directed movements"

Abstract

I describe a visuo-motor planning model based on statistical decision theory. The theory was used to predict the results of a simple reaching experiment. The model treats observers as ideal movement planners. In the experiments, subjects attempted to earn money by rapidly touching a green target region on a computer screen while avoiding nearby red penalty regions. In successive experiments we varied the magnitudes of penalties, the sizes of target and penalty regions, the degree of overlap of target and penalty regions, and the number of penalty regions. Overall, subjects acted so as to maximize gain in a wide variety of stimulus configurations, in good agreement with predictions of the model.
www.cns.nyu.edu/~msl

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