Mai Huong Phan, Björn Jörges, Laurence R Harris, Frederick A A Kingdom
{"title":"A visual bias for falling objects.","authors":"Mai Huong Phan, Björn Jörges, Laurence R Harris, Frederick A A Kingdom","doi":"10.1177/03010066241228681","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Aristotle believed that objects fell at a constant velocity. However, Galileo Galilei showed that when an object falls, gravity causes it to accelerate. Regardless, Aristotle's claim raises the possibility that people's visual perception of falling motion might be biased away from acceleration towards constant velocity. We tested this idea by requiring participants to judge whether a ball moving in a simulated naturalistic setting appeared to accelerate or decelerate as a function of its motion direction and the amount of acceleration/deceleration. We found that the point of subjective constant velocity (PSCV) differed between up and down but not between left and right motion directions. The PSCV difference between up and down indicated that more acceleration was needed for a downward-falling object to appear at constant velocity than for an upward \"falling\" object. We found no significant differences in sensitivity to acceleration for the different motion directions. Generalized linear mixed modeling determined that participants relied predominantly on acceleration when making these judgments. Our results support the idea that Aristotle's belief may in part be due to a bias that reduces the perceived magnitude of acceleration for falling objects, a bias not revealed in previous studies of the perception of visual motion.</p>","PeriodicalId":49708,"journal":{"name":"Perception","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10858620/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Perception","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03010066241228681","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2024/2/2 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"OPHTHALMOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Aristotle believed that objects fell at a constant velocity. However, Galileo Galilei showed that when an object falls, gravity causes it to accelerate. Regardless, Aristotle's claim raises the possibility that people's visual perception of falling motion might be biased away from acceleration towards constant velocity. We tested this idea by requiring participants to judge whether a ball moving in a simulated naturalistic setting appeared to accelerate or decelerate as a function of its motion direction and the amount of acceleration/deceleration. We found that the point of subjective constant velocity (PSCV) differed between up and down but not between left and right motion directions. The PSCV difference between up and down indicated that more acceleration was needed for a downward-falling object to appear at constant velocity than for an upward "falling" object. We found no significant differences in sensitivity to acceleration for the different motion directions. Generalized linear mixed modeling determined that participants relied predominantly on acceleration when making these judgments. Our results support the idea that Aristotle's belief may in part be due to a bias that reduces the perceived magnitude of acceleration for falling objects, a bias not revealed in previous studies of the perception of visual motion.
期刊介绍:
Perception is a traditional print journal covering all areas of the perceptual sciences, but with a strong historical emphasis on perceptual illusions. Perception is a subscription journal, free for authors to publish their research as a Standard Article, Short Report or Short & Sweet. The journal also publishes Editorials and Book Reviews.