Disentangling the effects of metabolic cost and accuracy on movement speed

Abstract

On any given day, we make countless reaching movements to objects around us. While such ubiquity may suggest uniformity, each movement’s speed is unique—why is this? Reach speed is known to be influenced by accuracy; we slow down to sustain high accuracy. However, in other forms of movement like walking or running, metabolic cost is often the primary determinant of movement speed. Here we bridge this gap and ask: how do metabolic cost and accuracy interact to determine speed of reaching movements? First, we systematically measure the effect of increasing mass on the metabolic cost of reaching across a range of movement speeds. Next, in a sequence of three experiments, we examine how added mass affects preferred reaching speed across changing accuracy requirements. We find that, while added mass consistently increases metabolic cost thereby leading to slower metabolically optimal movement speeds, self-selected reach speeds are slower than those predicted by an optimization of metabolic cost alone. We then demonstrate how a single model that considers both accuracy and metabolic costs can explain preferred movement speeds. Together, our findings provide a unifying framework to illuminate the combined effects of metabolic cost and accuracy on movement speed and highlight the integral role metabolic cost plays in determining reach speed.