The Effects of Previous Learning on the Visual Perception of Velocity

Abstract

Twenty subjects were shown a film containing 54 presentations of a moving standard disc followed immediately by one of six well-known target objects moving at the identical velocity. The subjects were asked to judge the speed of the target in relation to the standard. Judgments were made in arbitrary numbers from 0-50 to enable calculation of error magnitude as well as direction. It was hypothesized that objects which are known to move fast would be overestimated in relation to the standard while objects known to move slow would be underestimated. The results did not fully support the hypotheses. However, they did point up a need for research into the possible existence of differential modes of perception mediated by changes in objective speed of the target.