Intercepting moving targets: does the visuomotor latency depend on whether one taps on the target or slides through it?

When trying to intercept a moving target, one’s movements are continuously adjusted to match the latest information about the target’s position. Many target characteristics influence the latency of such adjustments. Does the kind of movement that is being made also influence this visuomotor latency? Since there are reasons to suspect that it might, we compared the latency of responses to sudden jumps in moving targets’ positions when making two quite different movements to intercept the targets: sliding one’s finger across a screen to pass through the moving targets and lifting one’s finger off the screen to tap on the targets. Twenty-two participants intercepted targets by making both these movements in two separate blocks of trials in counterbalanced order. Despite the substantial differences between the two kinds of movements, the latency of the responses was 114 ms for both. Thus, the visuomotor latency does not depend on the kind of movement that is made.