Consistent Individual Tendencies in Motor Speed-Accuracy Trade-Off

The literature of Speed-Accuracy Trade-Off (SAT) in motor control has evidenced individuality in the preference to trade different aspects (mean, variance) of spatial and temporal errors. Nonetheless, to the best of our knowledge, how robust this preference is has not been properly tested. Thirty participants performed nine conditions with different time and spatial criteria over two days (scanning). In-between these scanning conditions, individuals performed a practice condition that required modifications of the individuals’ preferences in SAT. Through Bayesian analyses, we found that, despite individuals demonstrating changes during practice, decreasing movement time, they did not modify how they performed the scanning conditions. This is evidence for a robust SAT individual tendency. We discuss how such individuality could modify how individuals perform within/between SAT criteria, and what this means for interpretation of results.