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The aim of this study was to find the effect of holographic sight (HS) on short-distance shooting accuracy and precision during static and high-intensity dynamic actions. Twenty policemen (31 ± 2.2 years, 85.6 ± 6.1 kg, and 181.9 ± 4.4 cm) performed five shots in the 10-s limit under the static condition for 20 m and dynamic condition 15–5 m, and after 4 × 10 m sprint action, both with fixed sight (FS) and HS. The analysis of variance post hoc test revealed that HS_static had higher shouting accuracy than FS_static, FS_dynamic, and HS_dynamic (p = .03, p = .0001, and p = .0001, respectively) and FS_dynamic had lower precision than FS_static, HS_static, and HS_dynamic (p = .0003, p = .0001, and p = .01, respectively) in vertical sway. The HS for rifles has improved the accuracy of static shooting and vertical sway precision of dynamic shooting.

Smeets et al. (2016) suggested that motor adjustments may be quick because they don’t require stimulus detection. We agree that these rapid adjustments probably reflect rapid perceptual processing rather than rapid motor execution, but we question whether the absence of detection is the best way to explain the effect. We suggest that it is unclear what mechanisms would be involved in detection and why detection would be required in some of the cases discussed by Smeets et al. Instead, we suggest that ultra-fast motor adjustments require very little competition among possible stimuli or responses. We suggest that escaping competition rather than avoiding detection may be the cause of the very short reaction times that Smeets et al. identified.

Most studies investigating movement preparation report substantial longer reaction times than studies probing response times to adjust an ongoing movement. However, both behaviors constitute control processes that transform sensory information about the environment into motor commands. Smeets, Oostwoud Wijdenes, and Brenner (2016) base their review on the hypothesis of a qualitative difference between the two sensorimotor control processes. By ruling out that the three latter movement stages proposed by Donders (1969)—identification, selection, and execution—are responsible for the difference, they argue for a specific role of the detection stage. Specifically, they reason that the detection in (target) change is only necessary for movement initiation and thus constitutes the qualitative difference between the two behaviors. In contrast to this view, I will advocate that change detection is not a qualitatively discriminating feature between the two processes. Instead, the difference in response time might rather stem from different decision criteria (Wolpert & Landy, 2012) set on the detection threshold. This threshold is rather conservative for movement initiation and more relaxed for online adjustments. However, both are states on the same continuum. Thus, movement initiation and online adjustments might even not be qualitatively different at all.

The target article (Smeets, Oostwoud Wijdenes, & Brenner, 2016) proposes that short latency responses to changes in target location during reaching reflect an unconscious, continuous, and incremental minimization of the distance between the hand and the target, which does not require detection of the change in target location. We, instead, propose that short-latency visuomotor responses invoke reflex- or startle-like mechanisms, an idea supported by evidence that such responses are both automatic and resistant to cognitive influences. In addition, the target article fails to address the biological underpinnings for the range of response latencies reported across the literature, including the circuits that might underlie the proposed sensorimotor loops. When considering the range of latencies reported in the literature, we propose that mechanisms grounded in neurophysiology should be more informative than the simple information processing perspective adopted by the target article.