Technical Report No. We showed subjects a line-drawn creature moving on a computer screen. Suddenly the creature stopped and subjects' memory for position was tested, revealing large forward memory shifts. We discuss the significance of dynamics, directionality, and animacy in event and object perception.
Many events involve motor action from the perceiver that is related to action by others.
Even if the current environment contains no active objects besides the perceiver, the perceiver may well be planning to act on the environment, by walking through it or by manipulating an object within it. Or the perceiver may be monitoring the environment for possible and probable events, such as the possible sudden lunge of a resting animal. Even static stimuli can invoke dynamic mental representations. We called this representational momentum . Subjects were instructed to remember the third orientation they saw, and were presented with a fourth orientation that was either the same as, or different from, the third.