AN INFORMATION INTEGRATION APPROACH TO PERCEPTION OF CAUSALITY TROUGH CONTINUOUS BEHAVIOURAL MEASURES

Abstract

The study of perceptual causality has known a regain in interest from the moment that continuous behavioural measures, and not just perceptual reports, were proposed. As one such measure, representational momentum (RM), was recently applied by T. Hubbard to Michotte’s launching paradigm. Among the several open issues regarding the use of RM to gauge perceptual causality there are the following two: 1) how the joint action of dynamic and kinematics variables is captured and integrated in RM; 2) the influence of specific response modalities. In this work “launcher-target†velocities, size of launcher (“implied massâ€), gap at the collision, and distance travelled by the target were fully crossed in two information integration tasks, which demanded a localisation response either through a mouse cursor or with a pointer. A significant role of velocity, mass and gap was documented, with mass and velocity combining additively. Integration patterns were shown the same in both response modalities, although “pointing†appears as an advantageous response modality to address RM-attenuation effects.