Representational momentum, spatial layout, and viewpoint dependency

Abstract

Completing a representational momentum (RM) task, participants viewed one of three camera motions through a scene and indicated whether test probes were in the same position as they were in the final view of the animation. All camera motions led to RM anticipations in the direction of motion, with larger distortions resulting from rotations than a compound motion of a rotation and a translation. A surprise test of spatial layout, using an aerial map, revealed that the correct map was identified only following aerial views during the RM task. When the RM task displayed field views, including repeated views of multiple object groups, participants were unable to identify the overall spatial layout of the scene. These results suggest that the object–location binding thought to support certain change detection and visual search tasks might be viewpoint dependent.

Keywords:

• Representational momentum
• Spatial layout
• Viewpoint dependency

Acknowledgements

We thank Marco Antunez, Honna L. Housley, Alexander R. H. Libson, Benjamin P. van Dyke, and Alana Vaughn for assistance with data collection, and Tim Hubbard, Marco Bertamini, and one anonymous reviewer for helpful comments. Experiment 1 was presented at the Eastern Psychological Association, March 2007, and was TB's BS honours' thesis.