A COMPARISON OF HAND AND FOOT MOVEMENT TIMES

Three experiments are reported in which a comparison is made between the times for movement of the hand and the foot. Both ballistic and visually-controlled movements were studied. It was found that execution time for foot movements is generally about twice as long as that for the equivalent arm movement. The times for foot movements were described well by the Welford, Norris and Shock modification of Fitts' Law for visually-controlled movements and, for ballistic movements, by the square-root-of-amplitude equation found by Hoffmann for arm movements.