The Perception of Relative Mass in Physical Collisions

Flynn, Steven B.

doi:10.1207/s15326969eco0603_2

Cited by 22 publications

(29 citation statements)

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“…More experiments that extend the sampling of the relevant parameter space are also needed. This will include going beyond the realm of simulated sliding collisions and into more natural conditions, as initiated by Flynn (1994). Thus, the current situation offers a rich variety of topics for further research, many of which could be of relevance for central issues of perception and cognition in general.…”

Section: Concluding Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This development shows that, under adequate test conditions, observers of collisions can be quite adept at discriminating relative mass. Moreover, a recent study by Flynn (1994) suggests that the PSE offset is even smaller when one is viewing natural rolling collisions, as opposed to simulated sliding collisions. Hence continued research will be required before human performance on this type of task can be fully assessed.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Support for the cue-heuristic model is based on suboptimal observer performance: Response to Gilden and Proffitt (1994)

Runeson

1995

Perception & Psychophysics

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Gilden and Proffitt (1994) have derived support for their updated cue-heuristic model of mass discrimination in observed collisionsfrom two experiments reported by Runeson and Vedeler (1993In a way potentially relevant for perception, the kinematics of colliding objects contain information that specifies the ratio of the objects' masses and about their efficient elasticity (Runeson, /1983. This finding has been generalized and applied to both animate and inanimate events. Thus the expression kinematic specification of dynamics, or the KSD-principle for short, is used to identify a category of informative relations, granted by basic natural laws and ecological constraints (Runeson & Frykholm, 1983; see also Runeson, 1994a).When a certain type of information is shown to exist, it raises the possibility that it might be exploited by per- ceivers. The prospects are strengthened when, as in the case of KSD, the type of environmental properties specified appears to be of relevance for organisms in planning and performing their actions. Thus it was suggested that, although mass and elasticity are "hidden" dynamic properties of objects, they might nevertheless be perceivable by vision (Runeson, /1983.In collision events, the information for mass ratio resides in higher order properties (invariants) of the pattern of motions. The informative relation can be described in several ways. For collisions in one dimension,where mA and mB are the masses of the two objects, and U and v designate the velocities before and after impact (Figure 1). For collisions in two and three dimensions, the same equation can be used if the motions are projected on the collision axis. However, one can also use a generalized equation in which motion vectors replace the velocities:Furthermore, observing that each (v -u) term stands for change in motion in an object, we can set w = v -u and get (3) where W A and w B are collinear vectors that describe the changes in motion incurred by the objects in the collision. Thus, in the most compact form, the ratio of mass is inversely proportional to, and hence uniquely specified by, the relative amount ofmotion change incurred by the two objects in the collision.In the following discussion, it is important to consider the ontological implications of this set of alternative equations. Their variety shows that there is no necessity to register vector components of the motions, or to derive them as projections on any explicit or implicit axes. Nor is it necessary to register trajectory parameters (e.g., speeds and directions) or individual motion vectors, inasmuch as a change in motion is equally well a kinematic property. Hypothetically, it is therefore possible that motion change could be picked up directly by a suitably 'evolved and attuned perceptual system (i.e., a smart perceptual mechanism; Runeson, , 1994b. Indeed, the same possibility exists for the relative amount of change in two moving objects, hence the mass ratio might be directly perceivable as a single property. The plausibility of such a fu...

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Section: Concluding Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Support for the cue-heuristic model is based on suboptimal observer performance: Response to Gilden and Proffitt (1994)

Runeson

1995

Perception & Psychophysics

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“…If so, we should not speak of the perception of a picture but of a nonperceptual kind of apprehension" (Gibson, 1980, p. xv). Pictures do not provide affordances: this contradiction persistently worried Gibson and his followers (Stoffregen, 1993), who have for the most part used real-world settings for perceptionaction research (Flynn, 1994;Warren, 1984).…”

Section: Small-scale Object or Large-scale Scene?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual perception of markings

Ittelson

1996

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

124

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“…Sensitivity to dynamic properties revealed from kinematics was demonstrated when estimating the relative weight of moving balls in collisions (Flynn, 1994) or the weight ofan object lifted by a pointlight person (Runeson & Frykholm, 1983). Earlier work indirectly favors the role ofdynamic constraints in event perception.…”

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confidence: 99%

Orientation specificity in biological motion perception

Pavlova

Sokolov

2000

Perception & Psychophysics

256

199

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We addressed the issue of how display orientation affects the perception of biological motion. In Experiment 1, spontaneous recognition of a point-light walker improved abruptly with image-plane display rotation from inverted to upright orientation. Withina range of orientations from 180°to 90°,it was dramatically impeded. Using ROC analysis, we showed (Experiments 2 and 3) that despite prior familiarization with a point-light figure at all orientations, its detectability within a mask decreased with a change in orientation from upright to a range of 90°-180°. In Experiment 4, a priming effect in biological motion was observed only if a prime corresponded to a range of deviations from upright orientation within which the display was spontaneously recognizable. The findings indicate that display orientation nonmonotonically affects the perception of biological motion. Moreover, top-down influence on the perception of biological motion is limited by display orientation.The ability to correctly identify an event is ofgreat ecological importance for an organism, because it supports functional behavior in a continuously changing environment. Since the classic work ofGestalt psychology, there has been phenomenological evidence for veridical perception of simple events depicted only by rigid motions of several points. As will be shown later, the visual system is highly sensitive to information about the invariant structure in complex everyday events, such as biological motion patterns that consist ofa set of moving dots on the main joints of an invisible walker.Despite the potential perceptual ambiguity, humans readily extract the invariant structure from biological motion. In his initial study, Gunnar Johansson (1973Johansson ( , 1976 showed that adults need only 0.1-0.2 sec to identify displays with filmed biological motion. Mather and West (1993) extended these findings to perception ofanimated point-light figures of quadrupeds. Preschoolers 3-4 years of age were able to recognize point-light huParts of the study were presented at the 12th-14th Annual Meetings of the International Society for Psychophysics and at the I9th-2 I st European Conferences on Visual Perception. M.P. was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (436RUS 17/14/97)and by the MaxPlanck-Gesellschaft. Parts of the paper were done at the Institut fur Arbeitsphysiologie, Dortmund, the Institut fiir Psychologie, ChristianAlbrechts-Universitat zu Kiel, and the MPI for Biological Cybernetics, Tiibingen. We thank Niels Birbaumer, Isabelle and Heinrich Biilthoff, C. Richard Cavonius, Walter H. Ehrenstein, Dieter Heyer, Laurence Maloney, Rainer Mausfeld, and Sverker Runeson for stimulating discussions and Bennett Bertenthal for providing us with the walker-generating program. We especially thank John C. Baird for valuable advice on an earlier version of the manuscript and Arseny Sokolov for moral support. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.

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The Perception of Relative Mass in Physical Collisions

Cited by 22 publications

References 15 publications

Support for the cue-heuristic model is based on suboptimal observer performance: Response to Gilden and Proffitt (1994)

Support for the cue-heuristic model is based on suboptimal observer performance: Response to Gilden and Proffitt (1994)

Visual perception of markings

Orientation specificity in biological motion perception

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