Comparing three portable, tablet-based visuomotor tasks to laboratory versions: An assessment of test validity

Abstract

The assessment of visuomotor function can provide important information about neurological status. Many tasks exist for testing visuomotor function in the laboratory, but the availability of portable, easy-to-use versions that allow reliable, accurate, and precise measurement of movement timing and accuracy has been limited. We developed a tablet application that uses three laboratory visuomotor tests: the double-step task, interception task, and stop-signal task. We asked the participants to perform both the lab and tablet versions of each task and compared their response patterns across equipment types to assess the validity of the tablet versions. On the double-step task, the participants adjusted to the displaced target adequately in both the lab and tablet versions. On the interception task, the participants intercepted nonaccelerating targets and performed worse on accelerating targets in both versions of the task. On the stop-signal task, the participants successfully inhibited their reaching movements on short stop-signal delays (50–150 ms) more frequently than on long stop-signal delays (200 ms) in both versions of the task. Our findings suggest that the tablet version of each task assesses visuomotor processing in the same way as their respective laboratory version, thus providing the research community with a new tool to assess visuomotor function.