Movement prediction and movement production

The prediction of future positions of moving objects occurs in cases of actively produced and passively observed movement. We study the difference between active and passive movement prediction by asking subjects to estimate displacements of an occluded moving target, where the movement is produced by the subject or passively observed; in the passive condition, the target trajectory is either a replay of a preceding active trajectory, or a constant-speed approximation. In the active condition estimates are more anticipatory than in the passive conditions, but in all conditions, estimates become less anticipatory as the prediction distance increases, or the prediction time decreases. Decreasing the congruence between motor action and visual feedback diminishes but does not eliminate the anticipatory effect of action; introducing eye tracking, however, does eliminate it. Our results are compatible with common mechanisms underlying both active and passive movement prediction, with additional movement-related information in the active case making predictions more anticipatory