Spatiomotor dynamics of hand movements during the drawing of memory-guided trajectories without visual feedback

Abstract

This study reevaluates the one-third power law proposed to govern arm-motion kinematics relating drawing speed to the local curvature of the line being drawn. For complex drawings guided by memory without visual feedback, we find that the relationship is better characterized as a steeper power function that asymptotes to a constant speed for shallow curvatures, empirically approximating the predictions of the minimum jerk principle.