Department of Psychological Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA.
J Vis. 2024 Oct 3;24(11):4. doi: 10.1167/jov.24.11.4.
Falling objects are commonplace in daily life, requiring precise perceptual judgments for interception and avoidance. We argue that human judgments of projectile motion arise from the interplay between sensory information and predictions constrained by Newtonian mechanics. Our study investigates how individuals perceive falling objects under various gravitational conditions, aiming to understand the role of internalized gravity in visual perception. Through meticulously controlling the available information, we demonstrated that these phenomena cannot be explained solely by simple heuristics nor representational momentum. Instead, we found that the perceptual judgments of humans (n = 11, 13, 14, and 11, respectively, in Experiments 1, 2, 3, and 4) are influenced by a combination of sensory information and gravity predictions, highlighting the role of internalized physical constraints in the perception of projectile motion.
日常生活中，物体坠落很常见，需要进行准确的感知判断才能进行拦截和避让。我们认为，人类对抛射体运动的判断来自于感官信息与受牛顿力学约束的预测之间的相互作用。我们的研究旨在探究个体在不同重力条件下如何感知坠落物体，以理解内在化重力在视觉感知中的作用。通过精心控制可用信息，我们证明这些现象不能仅用简单的启发式或代表性动量来解释。相反，我们发现人类的感知判断（实验 1、2、3 和 4 中分别为 11、13、14 和 11 人）受到感官信息和重力预测的共同影响，突出了内在物理约束在抛射体运动感知中的作用。
