Fitts movement task
a motor-skills test that illustrates the relationship between speed and accuracy of movement. If a participant is asked to tap a pencil 20 times within the outline of a circle (the discrete version of the test), more pencil marks will fall outside the circle when the participant is asked to do the task quickly than when urged to be accurate. If a participant is asked to tap a pencil 20 times alternating between two circular outlines a fixed distance apart (the continuous version), accuracy will be similarly decreased. In current practice, the discrete version is almost always used in basic research, because the modeling issues are more straightforward, and the continuous version is usually used in neuropsychological testing and other more applied settings. The relationship between speed and accuracy for movement is formalized as Fitts’s law. [Paul Morris Fitts (1912–1965), U.S. psychologist]