Abstract
Familiarity with the visual environment affects our expectations about the objects in a scene, aiding in recognition and interaction. Here we tested whether the familiarity with the specific trajectory followed by a moving target facilitates the interpretation of the effects of underlying physical forces. Participants intercepted a target sliding down either an inclined plane or a tautochrone. Gravity accelerated the target by the same amount in both cases, but the inclined plane represented a familiar trajectory whereas the tautochrone was unfamiliar to the participants. In separate sessions, the gravity field was consistent with either natural gravity or artificial reversed gravity. Target motion was occluded from view over the last segment. We found that the responses in the session with unnatural forces were systematically delayed relative to those with natural forces, but only for the inclined plane. The time shift is consistent with a bias for natural gravity, in so far as it reflects an a priori expectation that a target not affected by natural forces will arrive later than one accelerated downwards by gravity. Instead, we did not find any significant time shift with unnatural forces in the case of the tautochrone. We argue that interception of a moving target relies on the integration of the high-level cue of trajectory familiarity with low-level cues related to target kinematics.
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Notes
While skateparks are frequent in some countries (e.g. the United States), they are rare in Rome, and specific skateboard tracks can be found only in specialized sport centres for the aficionados.
The tautochrone coincides with an inverted cycloid in the case of a homogenous gravitational field. However, the tautochrone is not anymore a cycloid for an arbitrary potential energy function different from gravity (Flores and Osler 1999).
The brachistochrone is the curve along which a point-like body slides from one place to another in the least amount of time. The tautochrone is also a brachistochrone for two kinds of forces (both conservative): (a) forces constant in magnitude and direction (such as gravity), (b) central forces varying in proportion to the distance from the centre (elastic force). In the first case, the curves are cycloids with horizontal bases. In the second case, the curves are hypocycloids and epicycloids, all having the origin as centre (Kasner 1909).
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Acknowledgments
The work was supported by the Italian University Ministry (PRIN grant) and the Italian Space Agency (SLINK, COREA and ARIANNA grants). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. A.M. is supported by the PhD program in Neurosciences of the University of Rome Tor Vergata. F.L. and M.Z. thank Prof. Andrea Lacquaniti for bringing “Curve celebri” (Famous curves) to their attention.
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Mijatović, A., La Scaleia, B., Mercuri, N. et al. Familiar trajectories facilitate the interpretation of physical forces when intercepting a moving target. Exp Brain Res 232, 3803–3811 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-014-4050-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-014-4050-6