ASSESSMENT OF MOTION AS INFLUENCED BY STRUCTURE OF BACKGROUND

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Abstract
Gottsdanker, R. Assessment of motion as influenced by structure of background. Scand. J. Psychol., 1962, 3, 122–128.—Detection of target acceleration was improved by having a near landmark in addition to the surrounding frame. Adding landmarks, even within the course of motion, brought no further gain. Evidently, rate is not assessed by estimating time taken to cover known distances. Best performance was found when fine background marks were near enough together to form a texture, but not if it was perfectly uniform. It is suggested that the advantage provided both by the near point and the texture is the indirect one of stabilizing space. This effect is conceived of as graded, reaching its ultimate value in a textured surface.