The Tau Effect—an Example of Psychological Relativity

Helson, Harry

doi:10.1126/science.71.1847.536

Cited by 122 publications

(120 citation statements)

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“…For example, the Tau and Kappa effects are two complementary illusions in which either stimulus timing presentation or spatial intervals between two sources lead to an illusion of distance or timing (Christopher Bill & Teft, 1972;Helson, 1930;Sarrazin et al, 2005). In experiments on the Tau effect, subjects systematically underestimated the spatial distance between stimuli separated by shorter temporal intervals (faster imputed velocities).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Especially in the field investigating non-veridical perceptions, crossmodal comparisons may be helpful to uncover underlying mechanisms (Christopher Bill & Teft, 1972;Helson, 1930;Sarrazin, Giraudo, & Pittenger, 2005). Evidence of a tactile RM would allow to disentangle body-centered and space-centered frames of references, which is relevant for patients with spatial processing deficits, in whom RM has previously been shown to be altered (Lenggenhager et al, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tactile motion lacks momentum

Macauda

Lenggenhager

Meier

et al. 2017

Psychological Research

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The displacement of the final position of a moving object in the direction of the observed motion path, i.e. an overestimation, is known as Representational Momentum. It has been described both in the visual and auditory modality, and is suggested to be modality-independent.Here, we tested whether a Representational Momentum can also be demonstrated in the somatosensory domain. While the cognitive literature on Representational Momentum suggests that it can, previous work on the psychophysics of tactile motion perception would rather predict an underestimation of the perceived endpoint of a tactile stimulus. Tactile motion stimuli were applied on the left and the right dorsal forearms of 32 healthy participants, who were asked to indicate the subjectively perceived endpoint of the stimulation. Velocity and direction of the trajectory was varied. Contrary to the prediction based on the Representational Momentum literature, participants in our experiment significantly displaced the endpoint against the direction of movement (underestimation). The results are thus compatible with previous psychophysical findings on the perception of tactile motion. Further studies combining paradigms from classical psychophysics and cognitive psychology will be needed to resolve the apparently paradoxical predictions by the two literatures.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tactile motion lacks momentum

Macauda

Lenggenhager

Meier

et al. 2017

Psychological Research

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“…Distance judgements were found to vary as a function of the duration of the temporal ISIt. Since then, many studies -involving the visual (Bill and Teft 1969), auditory (Cohen et al 1953), or kinesthetic (Helson and King 1931;Lechelt and Bochert 1977) modality -have shown that when two constant spatial ISIs are associated with variable temporal ISIt, distance is overestimated or underestimated in accordance with the temporal ISIt, an effect Helson (1930) coined the "tau effect".…”

Section: The Issue Of Space-time Organizationmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…The present article addresses these fundamental questions that are of longstanding interest to experimental psychology. Indeed, the relation between spatial and temporal dimensions of stimuli was addressed in studies of perception in the first half of the last century (Benussi 1913;Helson 1930;Helson and King 1931), and, more recently, in the domain of motor control (Lee 2000). Links between spatial and temporal dynamics of action have been documented in the framework of precision aiming tasks (Fitts 1954;Meyer et al 1988;Mottet and Bootsma 1999) and bi-manual coordination tasks (Kelso 1981;Temprado et al 2001;Zanone and Kelso 1992).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

A model of contextual effect on reproduced extents in recall tasks: the issue of the imputed motion hypothesis

2005

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In this article the fundamental question of space and time dependencies in the reproduction of spatial or temporal extents is studied. The functional dependence of spatial responses on the temporal context and the corresponding dependence of temporal responses on spatial context are reported as the tau and kappa effects, respectively. A common explanation suggested that the participant imputes motion to discontinuous displays. Using a mathematical model we explore the imputed velocity hypothesis and provide a globally fit model that addresses the question of sequences modelling. Our model accounts for observed data in the tau experiment. The accuracy of the model is improved introducing a new hypothesis based on small velocity variations. On the other hand, results show that the imputed velocity hypothesis fails to reproduce the kappa effect. This result definitively shows that both effects are not symmetric.

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“…The above-described illusion, labeled tau effect (Helson, 1930;Helson & King, 1931), demonstrates the dependence of judgments of spatial distance on temporal duration: shorter temporal intervals are associated with shorter spatial distance judgments, and vice versa. The reverse phenomenon, i.e.…”

Section: Psychological Relativity Of Space and Timementioning

confidence: 99%

Complementarity of Space and Time in Distance Representations

Waliński¹

2014

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The Tau Effect—an Example of Psychological Relativity

Cited by 122 publications

References 0 publications

Tactile motion lacks momentum

Tactile motion lacks momentum

A model of contextual effect on reproduced extents in recall tasks: the issue of the imputed motion hypothesis

Complementarity of Space and Time in Distance Representations

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