A Further Study of the Pendulum Phenomenon

Abstract

4 first series of experiments had demonstrated certain conditions eliciting or inhibiting a "pendulum" phenomenon in the visual perception of apparent movement. The present study consists of five further variations designed to show more clearly conditions of occurrence and non-occurrence of this type of movement.Altering the axis of display to vertical significantly reduces the frequency of pendular-movement perception; Altering the position of metronome from behind to the side of the visual display, gives results almost identical with those where the metronome was inaudible, but, when the metronome is illuminated in this position, all forms of movement perception are reduced, and no pendular movement is reported. The results for all the ten conditions, including the five of the first series are summarized, and the following possible factors are discussed : past experience, physiological nystagmus, and intervening adaptation. All three may be required to account for the perceptual phenomena under investigation and the dichotomizing of explanations into "experiential, " or "physiological," appears to be arbitrary and inconsistent with the complexity of the observed facts. I IKTRODUCTIOS In a previous paper (Hall, Earle and Crookes, 1952), certain conditions for the occurrence or non-occurrence of an arcuate type of apparent movement between two alternating lights were described. With a metronome directly behind the display screen and producing alternating light signals synchronously with the auditory rhythm, the impression of movement of a light along a curved path was very strong. Experimental analysis of some of the conditions facilitating or inhibiting the phenomenon showed it to be complexly determined by, amongst other factors, the circular shape of the lights, their rhythmical presentation, and the warming and cooling of the lamp filaments.In these experiments it had been noticed that, in addition to affecting the path which the movement seemed to take, certain conditions of stimulus presentation seemed to facilitate the perception of any kind of movement. This general effect was, however, not analysed further because it was only secondary to the main effect on the path of movement, but it appears that Werner and Zietz (1928) had shown intersensory effects which are somewhat similar to this. For example, they used a rate of succession of the visual stimuli which was below the accepted optimum for movement perception, and accompanied this by an auditory rhythm composed of clicks at a rate slightly faster than that of the visual stimuli. Some of their subjects reported definite movements in the visual field. Using an irregular series of taps, however, most subjects experienced a '' disintegration " of the visual movement.There are, then, two closely related problems requiring further experimental investigation. First, the main hypothesis arising from our previous experiments was that the path of seen movement must be primarily determined by a complex interaction of visual display conditions, and secondarily b ...

Just how important is spatial coincidence to multisensory integration? Evaluating the spatial rule

“…For example, the results of experiments in which the participants had to discriminate the location of target stimuli in one sensory modality while trying to ignore the distractor stimuli presented (at the same time) in a different modality, as in many studies that have been conducted using the cross‐modal congruency task, typically obey the spatial rule: distractors situated close to the target tend to exert a significantly larger effect on the speed and accuracy of participants’ performance than targets situated further away, regardless of the specific posture adopted by the participant (e.g., whether a participant's hands are placed in a crossed or uncrossed posture when investigating visuotactile interactions). A similar spatial modulation of participants’ behavioral performance has also been documented in those studies in which the participants have had to judge the direction of apparent motion of the stimuli presented in one modality (another task that is, in some sense, spatial) while simultaneously trying to ignore the distractor apparent motion presented in another modality …”

“…modality (another task that is, in some sense, spatial) while simultaneously trying to ignore the distractor apparent motion presented in another modality. [74][75][76] Researchers investigating the ventriloquism effect, which can be considered a spatial localization (or sometimes a discrimination) task, have also repeatedly demonstrated that the strongest multisensory spatial interactions occur when stimuli from different modalities are presented close to one another, and that the effect declines as separation of auditory and visual stimuli increases. 25,77,78 Such results, with a task that is unequivocally spatial, also clearly fit the spatial rule.…”

A Comparison of Auditory and Visual Apparent Motion Presented Individually and with Crossmodal Moving Distractors

“…Zapparoli and Reatto (1969) found that the direction of visual motion determined whether auditory AM was facilitated and interfered with. Finally, Hall et al (1952) and Hall and Earle (1954) showed that the path of visual AM was curved when accompanied by synchronous audio stimuli.…”

Visual Apparent Movement Research: Review, 1935–1955, and Bibliography, 1955–1963

“…Livson (1953) examined the after-effect of prolonged inspection of AM with relation to autokinetic movemenc. Hall and Earle (1954) changed the location of a metronome from the back of to the side of an AM display and produced results almost identical to those where the metronome was inaudible. Shapiro ( 1954) continuously stimulated one eye with an inspection figure located in the path of AM seen through the other eye and found a rise in threshold for optimal move-ment.…”