Attention maintains mental extrapolation of target position: irrelevant distractors eliminate forward displacement after implied motion

Localization of moving sound

“…It is also conceivable that the presence of the tactile stimulus reduced the forward displacement by distracting attention from the moving acoustic target. In the visual domain, numerous studies have demonstrated that allocation of attention can influence displacement effects (Hayes & Freyd, 2002;Joordens et al, 2004;Kerzel, 2003a;Munger & Owens, 2004; for a review, see Hubbard, 2005). However, most of those studies indicated more pronounced forward displacements when distractors were present.…”

Dynamic representations underlying symbolic and nonsymbolic calculation: Evidence from the operational momentum effect

“…This random value had a mean value of zero and was drawn from a flat distribution on a logarithmic scale, in the range plus or minus half the numerical interval between the correct result and the first deviant above or below it. Technically, this was achieved by drawing a random number r between 0.5 and 0.5 and defining the proposed results as round(c 2 (r i)/4 ), where i again ranges from 4 to 4. and perceptual representational momentum, the effect is known to be modulated by several factors (for a review, see T. L. Hubbard, 2005): The amount of misjudgment is stronger for movements to the right (Halpern & Kelly, 1993), increases with increasing speed of the moving object (Freyd & Finke, 1985), and is larger with apparent, as compared with smooth, motion when the gaze is fixed (Kerzel, 2003). Interestingly, the effect can be increased by a secondary task that involves counting onward up to 30 in steps of one, two, or three (Halpern & Kelly, 1993).…”

“…McCrink et al (2007) argued that this bias showed similarity to a perceptual phenomenon called representational momentum (Freyd & Finke, 1984). When they watch a moving object suddenly disappear, subjects tend to misjudge its final position and report a position displaced in the direction of the movement (Halpern & Kelly, 1993; T. L. Hubbard, 2005;Kerzel, 2003). Analogously, McCrink and colleagues described their finding as an operational momentum (OM), since the misjudgment was related to the arithmetic operation carried out, and suggested that the subjects were moving "too far" on the number line.…”

Comment and Reply Why eye movements and perceptual factors have to be controlled in studies on “representational momentum”

“…Rather, this result suggests that forward displacement occurs only with apparent motion. The reason may be that observers automatically extrapolate the next step in a sequence of target steps and that attention moves to this next step (Kerzel, 2003a). If an implied motion stimulus is presented, the next logical target step after target offset is large, so that observers will end up far beyond the true final position.…”