Under appropriate conditions an observer's memory for the final position of an abruptly halted object is distorted in the direction of the represented motion.
Subjects are much less likely to reject forward than backward distractors.
The simulation above is implemented using Java. It will probably not display effectively with other world wide web browsers. An alternative version using animated GIF is also available , and is the recommended version. Note that the constraints of raster displays and a network environment imply that timing and positioning for the demonstration are very imprecise, particularly for the non-Java version. To maximize the momentum effect given these inducing stimuli, we would use stimulus durations of perhaps 250ms, interstimulus intervals after first and second stimuli of perhaps 250ms, and a retention interval before the test stimulus of about 300ms.