Visuomotor associations facilitate movement preparation

Motor behavior can benefit from discovering and remembering perceptual cues that reliably predict the appropriateness and requirements of a movement. Here we investigate the use and learning of these visuomotor associations. We use a powerful experimental technique that controls response time, allowing us to investigate the effects of perceptual cues on movement planning without a speed-accuracy trade-off. In Experiment 1, participants first memorized associations between symbols and movement goals. When these symbols were subsequently presented as cues, reaching movements were prepared as efficiently as if the goals themselves were previewed, without the need for additional practice. In Experiment 2, participants had to learn these visuomotor associations during the movement task itself. This learning enabled efficient movement preparation, and the rate of improvement scaled with the number and complexity of associations. These findings suggest that movement preparation can be facilitated by perceptual cues via statistical learning and memory recall, highlighting a potential role for learning and memory systems not conventionally implicated in motor behavior.