IS MASS INVARIANT? EFFECTS OF MOVEMENT AMPLITUDE AND DURATION

Authors

  • Baud Bovy Gabriel
  • Lisa Scocchia

Abstract

In everyday life we interact with objects without having the impression that their heavinesschanges. Yet, it has been shown that movements improve our ability to perceive the weight ofan object (e.g: Brodie & Ross, 1985; Jones, 1986). This study tackles the issue of massperception in absence of gravitational force. An admittance-controlled haptic deviceconstrained participants’ movements along a horizontal line and displayed inertial masses ina zero-gravity virtual environment. Participants produced a simple to-and-fro motion toassess two successively presented inertial masses within a 2I2AFC paradigm. Visual andaudio signals were used to impose different movement amplitude and/or duration for theStandard and Comparison stimulus. A Quest method (Watson & Pelli, 1983) was used to findthe point of subjective equality (PSE) between the Comparison and Standard stimuli. Theresults show that the movement amplitude and frequency lead to specific misperceptions ofthe physical masses.

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