PubMed · 8064255
Representational momentum for a spiral path.
Abstract
When a ball is shot through a spiral tube at high speed, the ball emerges in a straight path tangent to the ball's point of departure from the tube. However, past research has shown that many Ss believe the ball follows a curved pathway. In the 3 experiments described in this article, a ball traveling through a spiral tube was animated on a computer graphics screen. Ss' memory distortions for positions of the ball along each of 3 pathways were measured using a representational momentum paradigm. Retention interval was varied across the 3 experiments. The results from the 3 experiments reported here replicate retention interval results previously reported for representational momentum effects, and they suggest that the representational pathway of a ball exiting a spiral tube is spiral in shape. These findings may shed some light on why people have demonstrated naiveté on the spiral tube problem in past research.
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J J Freyd, K T Jones. 1994. Representational momentum for a spiral path.. https://doi.org/10.1037/%2F0278-7393.20.4.968
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