White Peter A
School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Tower Building, Park Place, Cardiff CF10 3AT, Wales, UK.
Perception. 2012;41(10):1193-217. doi: 10.1068/p7263.
Stimuli were presented in which a moving object (A) contacted a stationary object (B), whereupon both objects moved back in the direction from which object A had come. When object B rapidly decelerated to a standstill, so that the two objects did not remain in contact, object B was perceived as pushing object A. Thus, even though object B only moved when contacted by object A, it was perceived as the causal object, as making something happen to object A. This is contrary to the hypothesis that the object perceived as causal is always the object that moves first. It is, however, consistent with a theoretical account, in which visual causal impressions occur through a process in which visually picked-up kinematic information is matched to stored representations, based on experiences of actions on objects, which specify forces and causality as part of the perceptual interpretation of the event.
呈现的刺激情境是，一个移动的物体（A）与一个静止的物体（B）接触，随后两个物体都朝着物体A来的方向向后移动。当物体B迅速减速至静止，使得两个物体不再接触时，物体B被视作在推动物体A。因此，即使物体B仅在被物体A接触时才移动，但它被视作起因果作用的物体，即致使物体A发生了某些情况。这与“被视作具有因果关系的物体总是首先移动的物体”这一假设相悖。然而，这与一种理论解释相符，即在该理论解释中，视觉因果印象通过这样一个过程产生：基于对物体施加动作的经验，视觉获取的运动学信息与存储的表征相匹配，这些经验将力和因果关系作为事件感知解释的一部分进行了明确说明。
