Perceived Causality Occurs with Stroboscopic Movement of One or Both Stimulus Elements

Abstract

It was shown by magnitude estimation that the perception of causality first described by Michotte (1946/1963) also occurs consistently and strongly with stroboscopic, ie apparent or phi, movement. This is so when the 'causal' movement is stroboscopic and the 'caused' movement real, when these movements are reversed, and when both movements are stroboscopic. The effect is not due to prior experience with Michotte-type displays.

Impressions of force in visual perception of collision events: A test of the causal asymmetry hypothesis

“…Observers of this stimulus reliably report a perceptual impression that A makes B move; in other words, they perceive B's motion as caused by A bumping into it. This perceptual impression was first reported by Michotte (1946), who called it "l'effet lancement," translated into English as the launching effect (Michotte, 1963), and many subsequent studies have confirmed it as a reliable feature of perception (Gordon, Day, & Stecher, 1990;Scholl & Tremoulet, 2000).…”

“…People do not see B as making A stop. Support for this claim consists of an absence of evidence for any report that observers see B making A stop (Gordon et al, 1990;Michotte, 1963;Schlottmann, Ray, Demetriou, & Mitchell, 2006;White, 2006). There does not appear to have been any study in which participants were asked to report their impressions of the forces exerted by the objects.…”

“…Almost all studies of phenomenal causality have used left to right motion of the objects (e.g., Gordon et al, 1990;Michotte, 1963;Natsoulas, 1961), and I followed this convention. Studies of related phenomena have manipulated direction of motion and found no significant effect (Scholl & Nakayama, 2002;White & Milne, 1997), so it is not likely that direction would have a significant effect here.…”

Visual impressions of causality: Effects of manipulating the direction of the target object's motion in a collision event

“…At that point, Object A stops moving and Object B starts moving, typically with the same speed as Object A or slightly less. This stimulus reliably evokes a causal impression: Observers consistently report an impression that Object A brings about or produces Object B's motion by striking it, an impression known as the launching effect (Gordon, Day, & Stecher, 1990;Michotte, 1963;Natsoulas, 1961;Schlottmann, Ray, Mitchell, & Demetriou, 2006;Scholl & Tremoulet, 2000).…”

Effects of grouping and attention on the perception of causality

“…This project also began with Michotte (1946Michotte ( /1963, who-in the course of over 100 experiments in the English translation of his landmark bookworked out the details of how perceptual causality is impacted by the absolute and relative speeds of the objects, the distances and directions in which they travel (both before and after "impact"), various types of spatial and temporal gaps, and many other variables. More recent investigations have continued this project, exploring how the perception of causality is affected by different types of motion (e.g., apparent motion; Gordon, Day, & Stecher, 1990), the use of more than two interacting objects (e.g., the tool effect; Michotte & Thinès, 1963/1991, other types of spatiotemporal gaps (e.g., Schlottmann & Anderson, 1993), other modalities (e.g., Guski & Troje, 2003), and many other factors (e.g., Boyle, 1960;Gemelli & Cappellini, 1958;Hubbard, Blessum, & Ruppel, 2001;Kruschke & Fragassi, 1996;Natsoulas, 1961;Schlottmann, Allen, Linderoth, & Hesket, 2002;Schlottmann & Shanks, 1992;Weir, 1978;White, in press;White & Milne, 1997, 1999Yela, 1952).…”