Intuitive understanding of the relationship between the elasticity of objects and kinematic patterns of collisions

Abstract

Horizontal collisions have long been used as a tool for exploring people's intuitive understanding of elementary physical laws. Here, we explored intuitive understanding of the relationship between the kinematic patterns of collisions and the elasticity of the colliding objects. In Experiment 1A, we manipulated the simulated materials of two virtually colliding spheres and asked the participants to judge whether the simulated collisions appeared Bnatural^or Bunnatural.^We did the same in Experiments 1B and 2, but asked the participants to adjust the velocities until the collisions appeared to be Bperfectly natural.^In Experiment 3, we removed pictorial cues to the materials of the colliding spheres and asked the participants to rate the bounciness of the materials, in view of the kinematics of simulated collisions. Overall, the results showed that observers intuitively understood that collisions between more elastic objects subtend a higher coefficient of restitution than collisions between objects with lesser elasticity. The results also highlighted some discrepancies between the intuitive and Newtonian physics of collisions. Observers were somewhat insensitive to violations of the principle of energy conservation, and their responses were influenced by irrelevant kinematic features of the collisions, such as the collision type and precollision velocity. We discuss our experimental results in relation to salient theoretical perspectives on intuitive physics.

Inferences on enacted understanding: using immersive technologies to assess intuitive physical science knowledge

“…For example, Hast and Howe (2015) found that while almost 90% of elementary students incorrectly predicted that heavier objects would fall faster than lighter objects, over three-quarters of the students indicated that animations where the heavy and light objects fall at the same rate were correct. Similar results favoring recognition tasks where participants select animations that align with a canonical conceptual understanding, and reject animations that align with their non-canonical conceptual understanding expressed on explicit tasks have been found for projectile motion (Cooke and Breedin, 1994; Hecht and Bertamini, 2000), two-dimensional motion (Hast and Howe, 2017), circular motion (Kaiser et al , 1985a, 1992), gravitational free fall (Hast and Howe, 2015; Howe et al , 2012) and conservation of momentum (Kaiser and Proffitt, 1984, 1987; Howe et al , 2014; Vicovaro and Burigana, 2016), even when the incorrect motion endorsed by participants on the explicit tasks are included in the recognition tasks.…”

“…Such tasks often result in low student accuracy. In contrast, participant accuracy is routinely superior for recognition tasks that ask participants to observe correct and incorrect animations of physical scenarios, and then to select the animation that correctly represents motion in the scenario (Hecht and Bertamini, 2000; Vicovaro and Burigana, 2016). For example, Hast and Howe (2015) found that while almost 90% of elementary students incorrectly predicted that heavier objects would fall faster than lighter objects, over three-quarters of the students indicated that animations where the heavy and light objects fall at the same rate were correct.…”

Speed Overestimation of the Moving Away Object in the Intentional Reaction Causal Effect

“…In the light of these results, we believe that speed overestimation effect could be added to the list of functional effects of causality on the low-level properties of the scene such as spatial binding ( Buehner & Humphreys, 2010 ), avoiding overlapping ( Scholl & Nakayama, 2004 ), and speed perception in the naive physics of collisions and impetus theories ( Hubbard, 2013a , 2013b ; Parovel & Casco, 2006 ; Vicovaro, 2012 , 2018 ; Vicovaro et al., 2020 ; Vicovaro & Burigana, 2014 , 2016 ; White, 2009 ), supporting the hypothesis that social causality and animacy perception are deeply rooted in early visual processing ( Scholl & Gao, 2013 ), being largely automatic and resistant to higher level beliefs and intentions.…”

“…In launching events, moreover, there can also be a systematic error in remembering the vanishing position of the second moving object during its postcollision motion ( De Sá Teixeira et al., 2008 ; Hubbard et al., 2001 ; Hubbard & Ruppel, 2002 ). About speed, if Michotte (1946/1963 ) demonstrated the crucial role of objective speed ratio between A and B in perception of causality (see also Schlottmann & Anderson, 1993 ), apparent kinematics itself seems to be biased in causal events: Several works suggested that the perceived speed of B can be influenced by the speed of A, coherently to the naive physics of collisions and impetus theories ( De Sá Teixeira et al., 2008 ; Hubbard, 2013a , 2013b ; Parovel & Casco, 2006 ; see also Vicovaro, 2012 , 2018 ; Vicovaro et al., 2020 ; Vicovaro & Burigana, 2014 , 2016 ) and to White’s (2009) property transmission hypothesis. Parovel and Casco (2006) showed that the speed of the second object in causal events was overestimated for a wide range of speeds of the first object (launcher) but accurately assessed in noncausal events.…”

Evidence of weight-based representations of gravitational motion.

“…To make an illustrative example, since Michotte’s (1946/1963) seminal study on the perception of causality, the intuitive physics of collisions has been mainly studied using simple animations involving immaterial shapes moving in one or two dimensions (e.g., Gerstenberg et al, 2012; Lau & Brady, 2020; Runeson & Vedeler, 1993; Sanborn et al, 2013; Smith & Vul, 2013; Vicovaro et al, 2020; White, 2007). Only few studies have attempted to increase the realism of simulated collisions, for instance by using 3D spheres made of definite simulated materials (Vicovaro, 2018; Vicovaro & Burigana, 2016) or by mimicking the effects of friction and rotation on the collision behavior of the stimuli (Meding et al, 2020; Reitsma & O’Sullivan, 2009). The results of these studies suggest that the realism of the stimuli has a substantial influence on subjective judgments of the naturalness of collisions.…”