Measurement of the Shortening Effect on the Perceived Path of Stroboscopic Movement

Abstract

When two vertical short lines are alternately flashed at certain SOAs, a shortening of the apparent path of the stroboscopic movement is perceived. In the experiments reported here, factors influencing the shortening effect were studied with lines created on a CRT display.

Experiment 1 was designed to study the effect of SOA. Each stimulus line was always presented for 100 ms, but intervals were varied in the range from 25 to 800 ms. With short and long SOAs almost no shortening illusion was observed, whereas the SOA for optimal stroboscopic motion (200 ms) also produced the largest illusion (ca 16%). This agrees with the classic study by Scholz (1924 Psychologische Forschung 5 219 – 272) who found the largest illusion (25%) at the optimal frequency for stroboscopic motion.

Experiment 2 dealt with the effect of inversions (I), mirror reflections (M), and rotations (R) of the line during the stroboscopic movement (see Kolars and Pomerantz, 1971 Journal of Experimental Psychology 87 99 – 108). The particular movements were signalled by means of a short horizontal line added to one end of each of the two vertical lines of experiment 1. The configurations were (1), signifying parallel motion in one plane; (2), locomotion with rotation around the vertical axis (M); (3), locomotion with rotation around the horizontal axis (I); and (4), locomotion with rotation in the plane of the display (R). In all these conditions, the shortening illusion was significantly larger than in experiment 1. The differences between the four conditions were not statistically significant, but the illusion under condition (1) seemed smaller than in the other three conditions. With SOAs for optimal stroboscopic motion, ‘rotation’ paths tended to appear three-dimensional.