Representational momentum and the flash‐lag effect

Abstract

Representational momentum (RM) is a distortion where the final orientation of a moving object is misremembered as further along its trajectory. Experiments reported here examine RM when an additional object was flashed just as the moving object disappeared. When the task was to judge the flashed object, participants reported that the flash appeared to lag behind (flash‐lag effect; FLE). When the task was to judge the moving object, larger forward distortions for the moving object were found when the flash was present, despite previous evidence that the FLE depends on the moving object's continued presence. The results suggest that some part of the FLE depends upon what precedes the flash. In addition, equivalent RM was observed for implied and smoothly animated events, a possible limit to the velocity effect for RM was found, and larger positive distortions were found for downward rotations.