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The Perception of Causality: Feature Binding in Interacting Objects

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The Perception of Causality: Feature Binding in Interacting Objects The perception of causality: Feature binding in interacting objects John K. Kruschke and Michael M. Fragassi Dept. of Psychology Indiana University Bloomington, IN 47405 [email protected] http://www.indiana.edu/ kruschke/home.html Abstract time just after impact (approximately 200ms), the motion is phenomenologically duplicitous: It belongs to the ®rst object When one billiard ball strikes and launches another, most ob- while the second object has it. Thereafter, the motion of the servers report seeing the ®rst ball cause the second ball to move. Michotte (1963) argued that the essenceof phenomenal second object becomes autonomous. causality is ªampliationº of movement, in which the motion of Unfortunately, Michotte made only phenomenological ob- the ®rst object is perceptually transferred to the second object. servations of perceived causality and gathered no perfor- Michotte provided only phenomenologicalevidence,however. mance data, leaving open the possibility that ampliation of We extend the reviewing paradigm of Kahneman, Treisman, andGibbs (1992)to Michotte-style launchingeventsand report motion is merely an idiosyncratic epiphenomenon (Boyle, response-time data consistent with Michotte's notion of ampli- 1972; Joynson, 1971). Nevertheless, Michotte's methods and ation. We discuss how contemporary theories of feature bind- ®ndings are frequently described in textbooks on perception, ing can extend to the domain of interacting objects and address development, arti®cial intelligence, etc. (e.g., Boden, 1977; our results. We also suggest that our treatment of ampliation Bower, 1982; Bruce & Green, 1990; Rock, 1975), and a com- helpsclarify controversiesregarding whetherperceivedcausal- ity is direct or interpreted and whether it is innate or learned. pilation of newly translated articles by Michotte has recently been published (ThinÁes, Costall, & Butterworth, 1991). In this paper we report a response-time experiment that yielded Causality Perceived results consistent with Michotte's theory of ampliation. Imagine a billiard table. The cue ball rolls across the felt and We propose that the theory of ampliation can be construed strikes the 8-ball, launching the 8-ball. Most observers will to impact directly on theories of feature integration; i.e., the- report seeing the cue ball cause the 8-ball to move. The per- ories of how different visual features of an object, such as ception of causality has been placed at the foundationof cog- shape, color, and movement, are bound into a common iden- nition: Kant (1788) argued that causality was an innate and tity but distinguished from visual features of other objects in fundamental category of cognition; Piaget (1971) made it an the same ®eld of view (e.g., Treisman, 1986). The key idea is integral part of his theory of development; and, more recently thatifthemotionis perceptuallytransferred fromoneobjectto Leyton (1992) has argued that the extraction of causality is at the next, then the feature of movement must be unboundfrom the core of perception and cognition. the launching object and bound with the launched object. We The British empiricist philosopher David Hume (1739) ar- discuss how contemporary theories of feature binding can ac- gued that impressions of causality are mere fabrications of a count for Michotte's phenomenology of perceived causality. sophisticated mind: In the case of the billiard balls, the ob- Providing a performance measure of ampliation and giving server sees the cue ball move, sees the contact of the balls, it a theoretical interpretation in terms of feature binding also and sees the subsequent motion of the 8-ball,but does not see suppliesa new perspective on the relation between ampliation causality itself. The impression of causality, Hume argued, and perceived causality. Rather than debate whether a single is a learned nexus from the ®rst to second ball, based on re- process of perceiving causality is either innate or learned, we peated observations of the conjunction of the two motions, suggest that the sub-process of ampliation might be perceived their spatio-temporal contiguity, and the temporal priority of directly and developed early in infancy, but the complete per- the one motion relative to the other. ception of causality might be interpreted and learned. Two hundred years later, the Belgian psychologist Albert Michotte impugned Hume, arguing instead that the impres- An Empirical Approach to Measuring sion of causality is a spontaneous perceptual gestalt, which is Ampliation neither learned nor an interpretation via abstract knowledge of physical events (Michotte, 1941, 1963). Michotte claimed The Reviewing Paradigm that the essence of perceived causality is ªampliation of mo- The performance measure of ampliation that we will describe tion.º The neologism, ªampliation,º refers to two aspects of is an extension of the reviewing paradigm invented by Kah- theperceived motion. First, themotionof theapproachingob- neman et al. (1992). In this paradigm, the observer is ®rst ject is transferred to the launched object. Second, for a brief shown two objects on a computer screen, such as the triangle P1 T P2 Preview Field Linking Display Target Field Figure 1: Example of the reviewing paradigm used by Kahneman et al. (1992). and square in the left panel of Figure 1. Two letters, labeled In an event we call launching, shown in the left panel of Fig- ªP1º and ªP2º in Figure 1, are brie¯y presented (ªpreviewedº) ure 2, participants saw one circle move toward and contact inside each object. After the letters disappear, the empty ob- another, at which time the ®rst circle stopped and the sec- jects visibly move to new locations, as shown in the middle ondcircle moved away at the same velocitypreviouslyhad by panel of Figure 1. The motion of the objects linkstheir initial the ®rst circle. Analogous to the reviewing paradigm of Kah- positions to their ®nal positions, and so this motion is called neman et al. (1992), symbols such as ª@º or ª&º appeared the ªlinking display.º A target letter, labeled ªTº in the right brie¯yinthe initialmoments of the event, indicated byP1 and panel of Figure 1, then appears in one of the objects. The ob- P2 in Figure2. Then oneempty circle launched the other, and server's task is to identify the letter as quickly as possible, by a target symbol, indicated by T in Figure 2, appeared in the saying the letter's name into a microphone. launched object, at which time the launched object was sta- The key result is that observers can identify target letters tionary. Unlike the identi®cation task used in the experiments that matched the preview letter from the same object faster of Kahneman et al. (1992), the task for our participants was than they can identify target letters that matched the preview to indicate as quickly as possible whether the target symbol letter from the other object. In Figure 1, for example, ob- was the same as either of the two preview symbols. Responses servers are faster to identify the target, T, when it matches were made by pressing a button when the target matched ei- P2 (which was in the same object as the target) than when therof thepreviewsymbols, and by pressing adifferent button it matches P1 (which was in the other object). Kahneman when the target did not match either of the preview symbols. et al. (1992) called this effect the object-speci®c preview ad- A second event type, called delayed motion, began and vantage. ended the same way as launching, but had the two circles remain in contact with each other for approximately 890ms. The Reviewing Paradigm Applied to Launching According to Michotte (1963, Experiment 29, p. 91), ob- Kruschke(1987)applied thereviewingparadigm to Michotte- servers perceive delayed motion as two independent move- style launching events. Suppose the linking display in the re- ments withoutampliation. The ®rst circle is seen to stop com- viewing paradigm did not keep the objects separated, as in pletely, and the second circle then appears to move away with Figure 1, but instead showed one object striking and launch- its own motion. Because the two motions are perceived as in- ing the other, as one billiard ball can strike and launch an- dependent, we would expect to ®nd a robust object-speci®c other. Consider what would happen if the target letter ap- preview advantage in delayed motion. In launching,however, peared in the launched object. Would there still be a strong we predicted that the object-speci®c preview advantage would object-speci®c preview advantage, or would the preview in- be diminished. formation from the launching object be transferred, or am- Participants also saw two other events in which the im- pliated, to the launched object? Kruschke (1987) reported pacted objectdid notmove. The thirdpanel of Figure2 shows that the object-speci®c preview advantage was signi®cantly the event we call target at contact, and the fourthpanel shows reduced in launching, relative to a control event in which the delayed target at contact. In these events, the target appeared objects did not interact. at the moment corresponding to when the ®rst circle contacted We replicated and extended that study in new experiments. the second circle in the launching event. The motivation for Time P1 P2 P1 P2 P1 P2 P1 P2 T T T T T T T T Launching Delayed Motion Target at Contact Delayed Target at Contact Figure 2: Schematic diagram of the four events in our experiment (not drawn to scale). these events was to encourage observers to attend to the point tion, centered laterally on the screen with a small yellow ®xa- of impact (which is where the target appears in these ªcontactº tion dot centered between them. One circle and symbol were events). Previous experiments suggested that if observers see red, the other green. The ®xation dot and preview symbols only the launching and delay events, they might immediately appeared for 500ms.
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