Perception of forces exerted by objects in collision events.

Abstract

Impressions of force are commonplace in the visual perception of objects interacting. It is proposed that these impressions have their source in haptically mediated experiences of exertion of force in actions on objects. Visual impressions of force in interactions between objects occur by a kind of generalization of the proprioceptive impression of force to interactions between objects on the basis of matching to stored representations of actions on objects carried out by the perceiver. Such experiences give rise to a distinctive perceptual interpretation of interactions between objects as involving force exerted by one object acting against resistance offered by the other object. Active, moving objects are seen as exerting force; inactive objects are seen as offering varying degrees of resistance and not as exerting force unless there is reason to think that they acted back on the active object. The results of 3 experiments in which people viewed simple animations of objects colliding and made judgments of force and resistance supported several predictions made by this account.

The impetus theory in judgments about object motion: A new perspective

“…According to White (2009aWhite ( , 2012, perception and understanding of forces in interactions between objects originates with experiences of forces in our own actions on objects. These experiences tend to be stored in memory and can be activated by matching features of visual input information to generate perceptual interpretations of interactions in terms of forces.…”

“…However, impressions of forces in visually perceived interactions do occur. The typical stimuli in the studies that have shown this are simple collision events in which a moving object contacts a stationary one, and the stationary one then moves off (White, 2007(White, , 2009a. White (2012) argued that these visual impressions of forces are derived from experiences of acting on objects.…”

“…In this article, I propose a different interpretation for the results in question. The new interpretation draws on two related antecedents: the proposal that understanding of forces and causality originates in our own experiences of acting on objects (White, 2009a(White, , 2012 and the proposal that salient properties of causes are often judged to be transmitted to their outcomes, which is here called the property transmission heuristic (White, 2009b). I shall first summarize the impetus theory.…”

Mechanisms responsible for the development of causal perception in infancy.

“…However, mounting evidence has demonstrated that top-down knowledge about objects influences the impression of causality produced by watching a collision (launching) event. Namely, it has been noted that an impression of force seems to accompany the impression of causality produced by a visual launching event (White, 2007(White, , 2009). …”

“…However, the ability to intervene on the world in a causal manner has also received a great deal of attention as a potential mechanism by which causal knowledge is constructed and the ability to perceive causal relationships is derived (Muentener & Carey, 2010;Piaget, 1954;Rakison & Krogh, 2012;Sloman, 2005, Tenenbaum & Griffiths, 2003White, 2007White, , 2009White, , 2012. The mechanism(s) by which causal perception arises are not well understood.…”